2018 has been a year full of acknowledgments for Valentin Stalf, the co-founder and CEO of Berlin, Germany based mobile bank N26.| FinSMEs
A subsidiary of Allianz SE is looking to sell approximately 5% of its stake in N26 at a considerably reduced price, valuing the company at $3 billion.| Financial and Business News | Finance Magnates
What if you could pay people via email? While it has become commonplace for social platforms to offer one-step payment services, in 2013, Square Cash was an innovative solution that did away with the intermediaries. Users only had to connect a debit card and then they could pay people with an email address. It launched Android and iOS apps which simplified the process even further, and added mobile number functionality a year later. In 2015, Square made Cash available for businesses in the Un...| Business of Apps
The future of banking is being pushed by alternate financial startups, which operate outside of the typical banking infrastructure. Chime, which offers a debit, credit and savings account, aims to do this through a commitment to fee-free mobile banking. In the US, several technology companies are building financial platforms which do away with customer fees. Robinhood pioneered zero-commission stock trading and both Venmo and Square’s Cash App have made sending money to friends easy. Alongs...| 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
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
In the late 90s, paying for things online still had a stigma attached to it. There wasn’t any assurance that goods would be delivered or that faulty payments would be recovered. It was wild west and PayPal was one of the first payment solutions to try and civilise it. PayPal was formed when two companies, Confinity and X.com, merged. Elon Musk, of Tesla and SpaceX fame, was CEO of this combined company for a time. As he would in the future, he zoned in on the vision of PayPal’s future and...| Business of Apps
Cryptocurrency has been in development since the 1980s, but the launch of Bitcoin in 2009 by pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto was the first bit-currency to catch on outside of academic circles. At its core, cryptocurrency is a decentralised digital currency, which is usually backed by a public ledger (blockchain) to verify transfers, mint new coins and secure individual coin ownership records. For the first few years, Bitcoin enthusiasts mined the currency and tried to get it accepted ...| Business of Apps
Coinbase has led the way for cryptocurrency since its inception in 2012, as the largest exchange in the United States by volume. While known primarily as an exchange and storage service for Bitcoin, Coinbase also offers a wide range of other crypto and fiat currency exchanges. In a time before Bitcoin ballooned in value, Coinbase integrated its payment processing capabilities into Stripe, Braintree and PayPal, alongside merchant partnerships with Dell, Expedia and Time Inc. 2017 was seen as a...| Business of Apps
Mobile payments apps are used by more than two billion people globally, with millions more coming online each year. In India, South-east Asia and South America, some of the younger generation skipped the usual process of owning a credit or debit card, in favour of using mobile apps. Adoption of mobile payments is weakest in developed nations, such as Germany and France, which are finding it hard to ditch cash and cards. Even in the United States, adoption rates trail developing nations by a c...| Business of Apps