CEO of Bruc Bond Singapore Krishna Subramanyan, Country Manager for Poland Krzysztof “Kris” Matuszewski, and Board Member Eyal Nachum in a chat with Konstantin Bodragin, Brüc + Bond Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief. KB: Hi guys, thanks for making time. To start, what advice could you give a young fintech startup? Eyal Nachum: Focus on time-to-market. Forget about any devices. You have to get a product on the market. 80% of a working strategy is better than 100% of nothing. Once you do have something working, talk to the people utilizing it. Talk in your customers. They will know that you’re just starting out and will be more forgiving from the outset. They will supply you with the feedback you need. You can build the other 20% using knowledge. At Bruc Bond , we’re still always talking to our customers. It permits us to always improve inside ways our clients need. Krishna Subramanyan: I would give a fintech startup exactly the same advice regarding any start-up. It would be incorrect to concentrate on your own product or idea, eventhough it is tempting to do this. First, identify an individual population being served, and work to be aware of their pain points. Product follows the pain points driven through the decision to serve to this client population. Krzysztof Matuszewski: You need being methodical. First, find your niche. This will be your market opportunity. Then, researching the market. Check out the competitors to find whether somebody’s already doing what you want to do. Find technical partners to assist you avoid hasty decision-making and meet your time-to-market goals. Do customer development well. Always check your assumptions and stay ready to pivot, to switch the course of your product or service development to fulfil the customers’ needs. Then get feedback again. With each new release, new update, every change, you should get feedback. Keep the development/marketing balance healthy. In the early stages, you need to keep your product just suitable, but without marketing you may miss your market fit. Oh, in order to find investors. You will need funds to be expanded. KB: Getting the infrastructure right can make or break a project. What should young fintechs take into consideration when it comes to their banking/payments infrastructure? EN: Approach it in three stages. First, the infrastructure doesn’t matter to customers, just have the product out. Second, do basic infrastructure, so you can have a proof of concept. The third stage is the hardest from an infrastructure perspective. You have to achieve scale. How? You need a clear customer funnel. Even if it is like it would slow you down, for scale you have to accomplish it. You also have to have a good grasp in the rules and stay with them. If you do crypto and desire an account for payroll, your bank could play nice at stage one, although not stage three. Don’t get on any toes. Set up infrastructure in the way that doesn’t break anybody’s rules. KM: Use credible operational systems and conform to regulations strictly. If you don’t, you could lose your infrastructure. Be rigid with security, and reap the benefits of integrations when you are able. Open banking and also the PSD2 in Europe exposed a whole arena of possibilities with API connections – explore it. KS: Infrastructure must be flexible to adapt to alterations in understanding and environment. Real-time abilities for future innovation are key. It is becoming harder to retain customers. What is helpful is the ability to demonstrate to customers that we are listening all time. Therefore, there has to be something new, exciting available that sets the pace inside first few weeks, months, quarters on the back of client feedback. New architectures must leverage APIs and micro-services to compliment this pace. KB: Krishna, are there specific issues in terms of Singapore and Asia in particular? KS: Fintechs here want to accomplish a lot with very little in a very very short period of time. The teams are extremely capable but limited in resources. Firms that can thrive in the mutually supportive environment are those that win. So, collaborate in order to achieve the pace and the vision. For example, when operated banking just isn’t set in law, even the biggest banking players making the effort to reach out for the smallest fintechs to have interaction and collaborate. KB: Kris, think about the EU? KM: There is very good competition within the EU, both among payments fintechs themselves sufficient reason for banks. The market is well regulated, but there are a great deal of regulations to adhere to. In the EU, you have to take data rights into mind. You need to meet the requirements from the GDPR, the legislation built to protect individuals and legal entities from new risks inherent for the data economy. These can be hard to adhere to. On one other hand, Brexit offers a chance to attract customers leaving the UK, so there are opportunities everywhere. KB: B2B [business-to-business] and B2C [business-to-consumer] are two very different modes of business. What sort of unique payments/banking challenges do startups during these spheres face the others wouldn’t? How can they overcome them? KM: Fintech companies belong to either a business-to-consumer sales model or business-to-business model. Each model possesses his own challenges, although the B2C sales cycle tends to get much shorter than the B2B sales cycle, as businesses are slower to consider new technology. For B2B there’s a couple of major challenges. One is that banks give you a set of similar payment products and curently have an extensive client base. The second is that companies usually have very complicated and extensive product needs, so payment fintech must offer good service and operational excellence to compete for the corporate market. Therefore, companies from the SME sector become frequent clients of payment fintechs. With B2C, other challenges rise to the top. First of all, there’s money laundering. The importance of regulatory compliance in this is above all else. There is competition from small company credit cards, cryptocurrencies and digital cash, and from money transfer and remittances like a developing niche. EN: The B2B world wastes about 7 weeks annually on audits and accounting. That’s the reasons you see a great deal of ideas about decreasing the headache. With B2C you can’t wait that long. There’s always movement and change. There isn’t a real challenge to stability inside B2C sphere due towards the number of players, and cost is pretty fixed as a result of competition. The biggest challenges right now are cultural. There are language barriers between banker and customer. What we need are solutions for specific niches: the unbankable or refugees, immigrants, banking in languages, student-specific services, etc. KS: Selection of global banking partnerships continues to be the key. Depending on the regulatory climate, banking challenges can differ significantly. Banks react to the climate and cost of retaining business differently. Fintechs must spend time and effort to understand each partner’s direction. Ability to match target growth segments of banking partners to their own have to be an ongoing, daily activity.
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Author : Wilder Tillman |
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