NuBank is the largest neobank in the world, with over 90 million customers in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. Built as an alternative bank without the extortionate fees Brazilian’s regularly faced, NuBank quickly drew a large community of unbanked customers. Co-founder David Vélez had worked as a partner at Sequoia Capital and co-founder Cristina Junqueira was previously employed by the largest bank in Brazil. In the first few years, NuBank struggled to meet the demand, with a waiting list of...| Business of Apps
The financial sector has not been adverse to technology, however the monumental push by startups in the mid-2010s to disrupt financial sectors, spurred on by governments slackening regulations, forced established players to modernise its services to meet the demands of a new generation of customers. Everything from banking to investment to insurance has been modernised, utilising the power of the internet and mobile to improve speeds, reduce costs and improve customer service. In 2009, fintec...| Business of Apps
Like so many apps, Revolut was built with the intent purpose of fixing a personal issue. Nikolay Storonsky (co-founder and CEO) travelled a lot and was wasting hundreds of pounds on foreign transaction fees, which he understood as an employee at Credit Suisse to be ridiculously excessive. After failing to find a bank that would cover multiple currencies, Storonsky and Vladyslav Yatsenko (co-founder and CTO) left their jobs at Credit Suisse to solve this issue. They started working on Revolut ...| Business of Apps
Klarna is one of the leading fintech companies offering buy now, pay later services, which let consumers pay (BNPL) for things in a series of instalments instead of all upfront. Launched in Sweden in 2005, Klarna had intentions of being the Swedish PayPal, by making online payments simpler for the consumer and merchant. It was somewhat successful in this, but it wasn’t until it launched its BNPL feature in 2016 that Klarna gained international recognition and usage. BNPL is another form of ...| Business of Apps
With the introduction of zero-commission stock trading apps, a whole new class of investor joined the stock market. While some apps have shied away from adding tools to inform and help, eToro built its app from the ground up to be beneficial to inexperienced investors. It did this through its social investment platform, which allows anyone on the app to follow and copy the best performing investors on the network. Through this, inexperienced traders can learn what to watch for and how to mana...| Business of Apps
Venmo started out in 2009 as a way for founders Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail to pay each other without having to exchange cash or write a cheque. The first prototype worked over SMS, Andrew and Iqram would send notes alongside the cash to keep track of payments. While SMS functionality died with the app launch in late 2010, the social element of Venmo remains one of the app’s core features. In early demos, Venmo founders proposed it as a way for musicians to sell songs and merchan...| Business of Apps
Before Robinhood, anyone who wanted to invest in stocks would be charged between $5 to $10 a trade. They also needed to invest a minimum of $500 to open an account. Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt (co-founders) had previous experience building these systems and saw the extraneous costs as little more than gatekeeping people out of investing. “We are not setting any account minimums, which we think unlocks a market of investors who couldn’t do this before,” said Bhatt to CNBC at launch. ...| Business of Apps
The finance app industry is a multi-sector behemoth with thousands of businesses new and old trying to make financial processes easier on mobile. In the past decade, we have seen in the introduction of payments through near-field communication, commission-free stock trading, the birth of cryptocurrency and buy now, pay later apps. On top of that, many of the old financial institutions have integrated their systems onto mobile. Almost every bank has a mobile app nowadays, and has implemented n...| Business of Apps