The bolder, bigger, and borderless third season of the Visa Innovation Program is steadily moving ahead. The participants are actively working on their innovative solutions, and we continue to present them in more detail.
Today, we introduce another two promising fintechs. The first one is the Romanian Frisbo, which connects local fulfillers into one international network and offers plug-and-play fulfillment as a service for every online shop. The second one is the UK-based startup Fondy – a one-stop-shop payment platform for online retailers wherever their customers are.
At a glance:
The Problem
90% of all online sellers in Europe are unable to sell cross-borders. And those who do it, do it poorly. Some of the reasons for this are:
- It is too expensive
- Cannot deliver next day
- No local return address
The Solution
Frisbo is a smart e-fulfillment platform that takes over the storage, processing, and delivery of orders for online stores. It offers online sellers a network of fulfillment centers, available via one integration, under one contract. Frisbo uses an existing fulfillment capacity to offer online sellers a plug&play fulfillment service anywhere in the world.
Why is this important?
Frisbo enables online shops to tap into new markets. Fulfillment is key to selling abroad and most of the time a show stopper. Until Frisbo.
Founder Blitz
In order to learn even more intriguing insights, our team met with Frisbo’s founder, Bogdan Colceriu, for a quick “founder blitz”.
1. What inspired you to start Frisbo?
Dealing with e-commerce in the book industry, we had to deal with a lot of SKUs (titles) and fluctuating stocks that we would import from other countries. Ensuring good delivery times to customers was quite a challenge and we soon understood it is a challenge for many e-tailers. That is how we decided to launch Frisbo, a plug-and-play fulfillment service that offers easy logistics to any online shop.
3. What is the biggest challenge you have come against since you established Frisbo?
Our business model relies on local fulfillers in different countries unified in a single network and service. Ensuring the same quality level throughout the network is not an easy task. Solving this problem is probably the key to fast worldwide expansion.
2. What is your next big milestone?
Frisbo started expanding in the CEE but now it is on a straight line to covering entire Europe by the end of the year.
4. What does success look like for Frisbo?
Frisbo becoming the go-to solution for any online shop looking to expand to new markets using easy fulfillment.
At a glance:
The Problem
The great thing about having an online business is that you can sell anywhere. But taking payments anywhere is not so easy because when it comes to payment getaways one size doesn’t fit all. Customers want localization, while SMEs want a plug-and-play solution, which is easy, fast, and cost-effective. What is more, as funds flow through multiple international bank accounts in different currencies, SMEs lose money in delays, FX fees, and hidden charges.
The Solution
Fondy is a one-stop payment platform where businesses can accept money and make payouts to partners in the currencies of their choice. It includes full localization of the checkout page to drive customer conversion and sales. Fondy is designed to help online businesses of all sizes access simple and hassle-free ways of selling online worldwide and payments are processed only in a few clicks.
Why is this important?
With Fondy scaling up is easy: merchants, SMEs, marketplaces, platforms, and enterprises can start accepting online payments globally in over 150 different currencies. They can manage and control the flow of payments all in one place and in real-time to better monitor and understand shoppers’ behaviour so they can increase sales faster.
Founder Blitz
Meet Fondy’s co-founder, Valeria Vahorovska, and learn more about the vision and the next milestones for the company in our “founder blitz”.
1. What inspired you to start Fondy?
Having worked for 8 years in financial services and specifically for large banks, I realised there was a gap in the market when it comes to supporting economically online businesses of all sizes. In fact, back when I started, the main goal was to provide the highest level of service, flexibility, and cutting-edge technology to allow businesses of all sizes, SMEs included, to sell
online, expand and succeed in foreign markets. Today, I can proudly say that we have come a long way and work with thousands of customers who choose Fondy as their payment partner.
3. What is the biggest challenge you have come against since you established Fondy?
The biggest challenge for me is to be fast enough and to always keep the team motivated. Fintech is a fast developing segment and it is important to find the right problem, which you would like to solve and also bring on time the technology. There are already many unicorn companies on the market and all of them would like to be the best and the first – this is why it is important to be fast. In order to do this, you need to have the best team and constantly keep the motivation high. I am glad that we have a great team.
2. What is your next big milestone?
Currently, we are working on many projects and our next big milestone is the launching of a new product: Fondy Flow. With Fondy Flow merchants will be able to manage all of their funds in the currency of their choice, thus save time and money and do business like a local: accounts have their own IBAN, so they can use them like any local bank account, cutting on fees as well as taking control of the FX rates they pay.
4. What does success look like for Fondy?
Fondy’s big plan is to become a global cross-border payment platform where businesses can control and manage all their money flows from online sales in one place. Businesses will make acceptance of payments from customers and payouts to partners as a local transaction using our payment platform. This is how success looks like for Fondy.