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Financial technology, or simply fintech, is an industry that uses cutting-edge technology and available resources to work in financial sector and compete with traditional financial services. Fintech companies try to enhance or replace the existing financial services of the continuing companies. With the revolution of computer and mobile technology, fintech now represents a broad variety of technological intervention into commercial and personal finance. Fintech covers services like mobile banking, mobile trading, financial advisory, digital wallets, money management tools and robo-advisor sites. Speaking about fintech users, it should be mentioned that they fall into broad categories: customers, B2C for small businesses, B2B for banks and B2B banks business clients.
Overall, fintech is developing at a great pace globally. The growth of this sector does not lag behind the world. In this country, there are numerous existing successful fintech companies as well as promising startups that are rising. In this article, we will talk about the latter and describe to you the Ukrainian fintech startup scene.
Taplend
Taplend is a microcredit platform that provides money quickly and at small interest. This platform has a unique concept, as it combines a model of peer-to-peer lending and payday lending. In the first instance, a user borrows money from friends or family at zero interest. In the second case, a user borrows money for a short time from a financial institution. The service works as follows: a user enters the app and sets the amount they wish to borrow, with the pay back date. Requests are sent to friends and family of the user, and if they cannot help, they are sent to financial institutions. This way, Taplend allows its users borrow at lower interest when combining lendings from close people and financial institutions. The startup gets money from lead generation for institutional lenders. It also plans to charge commision from peer-to-peer loans, which are now free to perform in the service.
So far, Taplend reached the mark of 1,020 active users who performed 1,075 loan applications. Last year Taplend participated in three acceleration programs: 3 acceleration programs: Technation, Hub:Raum by Deutsche Telekom and SELLALAB. This financial help platform is so promising that it started working in UK recently. Without any doubts, we’ll hear about them in the soonest future.
Persollo
This much talked of startup was launched by a 16-year old entrepreneur from Ukraine, Stas Prisiazhnuk. Persollo is now expecting to get as much as $40,000 as a seed investment from an Australian startup acceleration program Muru-D. Persollo is a tool that facilitates online trading. This service can fit well for online businesses, freelancer, bloggers and digital magazines. With its help, one can capture their impulse buyers, increase conversion and maximize purchases. This simple instant e-commerce platform performs check-out in just 30 seconds.
With Persollo, sellers can pay less, sell directly to their audience on social networks and grow their business faster. Every seller needs to pay only 2.2% on top of regular Stripe fees. It’s easy and quick for the buyers as well – they can perform payments with just a click. Persollo payments are safe for both sides, as they are protected with a 256 bit key. They can be performed worldwide on any platform. The sellers get a dashboard to monitor their growth and development in the platform. Persollo makes you forget about the long checkout process, and we think it’s just amazing.
uCredit
This is a peer-to-peer lending platform for micro crediting. Unlike Taplend, the service does not offer a possibility to work with financial institutions. This platform passes the intermediary, thus enabling its users to set the best conditions for lending and borrowing money. Both the backer and the borrower get significant benefits when skipping the intermediary: the backer can establish a higher interest rate than deposit programs can offer and the borrowers can get money at a lower rate than the financial institutions can suggest.
uCredit system was developed taking into account the failures of its competitors who suffered significant losses due to multiple cases of fraud and default on loan. uCredit developed a system that checks the database of borrowers carefully. Currently, the service cooperates with the Ukrainian credit reference bureau. What’s more, uCredit has its own borrower forward estimate system that allows borrowers to take a balanced decision regarding a given borrower.
All in all, fintech is a complex and promising industry that attracts startups and entrepreneurs all over the world with its possibilities. However, one has to be tough to manage to grow a business in this sphere. There are countless pitfalls and, what’s more, it is often easy to underestimate the amount of work that needs to be done. Still, fintech in Ukraine is developing successfully. There is a venture cluster for developing financial startups in Ukraine, named FinTech Cluster. It aims at uniting financial startups, banks, investment funds in order to develop the fintech market and to lobby the interests together. Any fintech startup can join the cluster now. Developed on a basis of a venture hub, FinTech Cluster is a common initiative that unites startups and helps them reach out to banks and investors faster. It offers chances for all kinds of cooperation in the sector.
