Category: neobanks

Kraken grabs ‘top influencer’ spot for 2021

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Fintech, neobanksLeave a comment

According to a recently published study from Utility Bidder , the fintech sector is set to surpass $382 billion in 2027. It also estimates that blockchain-specific fintechs are likely to be worth in excess of $67.4 billion in the same timeframe. The report also had good news for Kraken, which it named the most influential blockchain company of 2021.

The Utility Bidder study analysed 50 fintech firms selected from the Forbes’ Fintech 50 report. They used four factors to assess each firm: total funds raised, the latest known valuation, number of Twitter followers, and the global searches stemming from Google Ads Keyword Planner between August 2020 and July 2021. Each one was given a score out of 10 for each factor, and as the report’s results show, Kraken was a very clear winner with a total influence score of 5.64.

Kraken is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world and also was the most followed fintech company on our list, with a Twitter following of over 780,00, far more than the majority of other fintechs Utility Bidder looked at. It is now available in over 170 countries around the world, with over 70 cryptocurrencies available for trade Kraken also recently became the first crypto exchange in the United States to be granted a special purpose depository institution (SPDI) charter.

Gemini, in second place, only managed to achieve 2.33, while the others in the top 10 didn’t even manage to score 2 – Alchemy at the eight spot only scored 1.10. It is interesting to note that Kraken has a valuation of $20 billion, whilst Gemini’s valuation is around $5 billion. Alchemy has a valuation of only $505 million.

Robinhood is another winner

In terms of financial technology as a whole, the top five fintech firms include Robinhood, Stripe, Kraken, Klarna, and Wise. Robinhood clocked up a score of 7.22 for being the “most searched for” fintech on this list, with over 28 million searches in the last twelve months, and they’ve also raised the greatest VC funding with $5.6 billion. As the report says, Robinhood is one of the big boys of the fintech world, with over 13 million users using the app to invest in stocks and funds commission-free.

Stripe, the software as a service company that has changed the game when it comes to payments, with no monthly or setup fees and no hidden costs scored 6.07. Started by two brothers in Ireland, Stripe is now worth an estimated $95 billion having experienced rapid growth and it is now investing in other start-ups such as Monzo.

Neobanks are challenging the big crypto exchanges

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Bitcoin, crypto, neobanksLeave a comment

As neobanks like N26 and Revolut, as well as payment providers such as PayPal, Square and CashApp move into cryptocurrencies, does this pose a threat to the cryptocurrency exchanges?

Investing has changed, according to Francis Bignell at Fintech Times. He says, “Due to the pandemic, younger, tech savvy individuals working from home, spending more time online, and flush with stimulus money found solace in investing,” and adds, “As a generation known for not accepting things as they are, simply because it’s how they’ve always been, they relentlessly refused to approach investing in the “traditional way.” 

What we now have is a rising class of retail investors who value investments by the social currency and utility (e.g. meme stocks, NFTs and crypto). The result of these trends raises a number of questions about the future of investing. 

Bignell points out: “In early 2021, Reddit users battled with Wall Street by skyrocketing GameStop’s stock share. This, along with the rise in meme stocks, show that Wall Street is no longer dictating what is worth investing in and what isn’t anymore.” You could say a new approach to valuation is rising, one that’s based on the social worth of a company versus traditional notions of profitability.

Crypto exchanges challenged by new investing environment

Public.com is an evolving investment platform. It will shortly support trades in bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ether, ethereum classic, dogecoin, litecoin, stellar, zcash, cardano and dash, and is being tailored to a growing, young demographic looking to trade in meme stocks. Public offers zero-commission stock trading and has an added social media component that could leverage the emerging meme stock-fuelled retail investment frenzy, as exemplified by Shiba Inu’s 24,459,593.97% rise in the last year, and Dogecoin’s 8,765.17% increase in value.

Robinhood is also about to challenge the crypto exchanges by introducing crypto wallets for its users to trade with other wallets. Robinhood users had previously been able to buy and sell a few cryptocurrencies, but had been unable to send those coins to external wallets or receive them from elsewhere. When this is implemented, it will offer Robinhood access to the space dominated by Coinbase and others.

US based fintech, MoneyLion, has announced it is adding crypto trading to its all-in-one financial services app, joining the ranks of N26 and Volt. It will introduce buying and selling capabilities for bitcoin and ether, according to its CEO, Dee Choubey. Choubey told CNBC, ““It’s a very important first step if we think that the future of fintech is DeFi. We will have created a segment of the population and have exposed them to DeFi, so when it becomes more ubiquitous, they’re fully prepared to take advantage of it.”

Maurizio Raffone Chief Financial Officer at Credify Pte. Ltd, explained how investing in a neobank would differ from a crypto exchange: “Neobanks’ typical client may not be a savvy crypto investor but is interested in having some exposure to the asset class and may not be bothered about NFTs, altcoins or stablecoins and so just having some degree of exposure to BTC or ETH would suffice. On the other hand, crypto exchanges do not really focus on providing any traditional financial service support but do generally provide a greater investment choice and with more sophisticated investment techniques.” 

What does that mean for banking and financial institutions? It means that they must have some form of crypto or digital currency feature or be left behind as their customers become more digitally aware.

Neobanks still need to build personal relationships

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Fintech, neobanksLeave a comment

Catalan neobank 11Onze has taken a novel approach to training its recruits in the art of building personal relationships with customers. Anyone who has used  a neobank is aware that without physical branches it is far more difficult to achieve that very thing consumers value in traditional banks – someone they can talk to, and who is designated as their personal banking advisor.

11Onze decided on a pop up Acadamy to take 50 recruits through a 250-hour training course focused on building personal relationships in a digital age.

11Onze COO Darren Smith, who is leading the training, said, “Our philosophy for the whole bank, not just for the campus, is about creating something truly exceptional. The first experience a customer will have with our organisation will be digital and we place a lot of emphasis in the technology and the user experience. However, we wanted to go much further than this. In a digital age we are worried that the personal relationships we build over time get lost and at 11Onze we wanted to bring relationship into fintech banking. We want our customers to have a long and meaningful, personal relationship with our representatives.”

Another reason for setting up the course is Covid-19 and the prevalence of remote working. The neobank’s agents will continue to work from home for some time, which is why 11Onze wanted to ensure that the recruits could also have a means to forge relationships with each other and with senior team members, as well as learn how to build robust client relationships. The bank also wanted the team members to build support networks, which James Sene, Chairman and founder of 11Onze says is impossible to do on Zoom calls.

He said: “The pop up academy was designed to provide a Covid safe and secure environment to give them all the knowledge, skills and tools required to be able to deliver an exceptionally high quality customer service experience. The Academy trained the “whole person” – and our programme places as much emphasis and priority on personal skills, mental and physical health and well-being, as it does on technical and professional skills.”

The importance of teaching customer relationship building

The Academy course delved into psychology and philosophy alongside learning to use new hardware and software. And it included yoga classes. A production team followed the new recruits and asked them to share stories of their journey and development. There is a marketing purpose behind this as Sene points out: “11Onze customers will be able to review and follow the personal journeys of our agents and this will help them develop a real relationship with the customer services representatives.”

He added, “In the digital age, we are concerned that the personal relationship we build will be lost over time, so, at 11Onze we aim to recover that “relationship” aspect that a traditional bank offers to establish links with the community in addition to withdrawing money or depositing it. We want our clients to have a long and meaningful personal relationship with our representatives.”

11Onze makes a very important point with its pop-up Academy idea: whilst challenger banks are often perceived as offering a better service than traditional banks, there are elements of the traditional way that mustn’t be overlooked, particularly customer relationships, because human psychology is very attuned to that need, and fantastic technology won’t easily remove it.

Neobanks need to own their niche

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Banks, Mobile payments, neobanksLeave a comment

Currently there are somewhere around 256 neobanks in existence, according to Exton Consulting. These brands offer a digital-only experience that are perceived as customer-centric and easy to use, as in opening an account only takes a few minutes. They are also lower cost to use than their physical banking counterparts.

However, only a small handful of these banks have achieved substantial profitatbility. Their names will be familiar: Revolut, N26, Monzo, Nubank and Chime amongst them. The others, which are significant in number, are unlikely to be profitable for the foreseeable future, according to Accenture research, which revealed “the average UK neobank loses $11 per user yearly.”

Part of the problem is the rising cost of providing a service, whilst the margins generated per customer remain low. Finextra correctly reminds us that disrupting the traditional banking market was always going to be a long-haul business, and that it really needs large amounts of venture capital investing to keep the LTV/CAC ratio in good shape.

CAC is ‘customer acquisition cost’, and LTV is Life-Time Value in this case. The LTV is a measurement of the average revenue generated by a customer in a 1, 3 or 5 year period. Clearly, neobanks want this to be as high as possible, but it is one area where they are being challenged, as the average is around 15€ per customer per annum. Banks like N26 and Monzo obtain revenue mainly from “the low debit card interchange fees,” but this results in very low LTVs. Less travel and smaller purchases during the 2020 pandemic has had a big effect on this.

The CAC is calculated by taking the total money spent on customer acquisition and dividing it by the number of new customers. Neobanks do much better than traditional banks in this regard, “with an average CAC of neobanks around 30 euros versus 200 euros for incumbent banks,” Joris Lochy reports at Finextra.

Lochy says that what we are going to see this year is a switch from chasing growth to increasing profitability. Neobanks are being strongly encouraged by VC investors to provide more profitable products, such as investments and credit: products such as credit cards, overdrafts, salary advances and purchase financing. They are also likely to chase small business customers, and provide Banking-as-a-service services to other Fintechs or even banks.

It also follows that some neobanks will stop offering free services. They used these effectively to grow their customer base, but now they may need to charge more fees.

Threats are also coming from the incumbent banks, but perhaps the biggest threat is from Big Tech stepping into this space. As Lochy suggests, what the neobanks need to do is “find a niche where they can excel and not fight head to head with the large banks.”

Finding a niche

This is likely to come by restructuring and rethinking the product offering to provide an even more personalised service, probably in the credit sector. Some would also be better off by targeting a specific consumer group and tailoring their product offering to them. For example, the Longevity Bank is for Seniors, and there are ones focusing on women, freelancers and SMEs. Ultimately, what neobanks need to do to survive, is offer something that no other bank, credit union etc offers – that’s what ill really bring home the customers.