London Fintech Podcast
00:23:20 · Tony Clark, Nik Storonsky
[00:23:20] S2: And in terms of doing payments and things like that, talking of regulation, one of the regulators who I think is actually doing quite a good job is a payment systems regulator, is there an economic regulator rather than a bureaucracy regulator? It may change in the future of course. And they're opening up access to FPS, the faster payment system in The UK, which is the sort of the real semi real time or real time the same day system. Are you looking at doing those kind of things as well or can you do all that via the eMoney licence as it is? [00:23:47] S0: Yeah, we can. We actually started already, like connecting to a faster payment system directly. [00:23:52] S2: Good. So on a different angle, I didn't quite understand from some of the articles I read about your international scale and certainly one of the problems with the banking licence is that even in the EU, even if The UK was staying in the EU, if you want to be a bank it's quite hard because you can end up having to get licences in different countries and all that kind of thing and it can take quite a long time. So how has it worked from a sort of regulatory perspective having a global money app? I mean, can you have a global money app? Does it have to be sort of registered everywhere or?
00:23:52 · Tony Clark, Nik Storonsky
[00:23:52] S2: Good. So on a different angle, I didn't quite understand from some of the articles I read about your international scale and certainly one of the problems with the banking licence is that even in the EU, even if The UK was staying in the EU, if you want to be a bank it's quite hard because you can end up having to get licences in different countries and all that kind of thing and it can take quite a long time. So how has it worked from a sort of regulatory perspective having a global money app? I mean, can you have a global money app? Does it have to be sort of registered everywhere or? [00:24:25] S0: Basically with e money licenses it's very easy. You effectively can issue accounts to almost anyone in the world except like, you know, some countries, except US, probably India as well. Then when it comes to cards, right, when you want to issue cards to people, then it's a bit trickier. So you need to be licensed in each country outside of Europe, right? So for example, if we have like cards license in Europe, so we can issue cards like across the whole Europe. But as soon as we want to go to say Australia, we need to get local license there. So it's a bit trickier. It's still doable to go in a country by country getting these licenses. But compared to getting a banking license in each of these countries, it's much easier because it will take you three, four months instead of two years. [00:25:10] S2: And so how many licenses do you have at the moment and ambition about how many licenses?
00:25:10 · Tony Clark, Nik Storonsky
[00:25:10] S2: And so how many licenses do you have at the moment and ambition about how many licenses? [00:25:15] S0: Well, we're right now covering the whole Europe, so we're kind of owning the whole infrastructure. Mastercard license, Visa license, eMoney license. The only thing that we don't have is a banking license, which we don't need at the moment.
00:25:28 · Tony Clark
[00:25:28] S2: Yes. I mean, have some sympathy if this eMoney thing does work out and prove scalable in itself because, as you will know from your background as well, the real point about a bank is that banks can do two things: one of which is create money and the second is transform maturities, I. E. Take someone's short deposits and turn it into a twenty five year mortgage. And I haven't yet come across a Fintech whose raison d'etre, whose reason for being is to either create money or transform maturities. So it does seem a very big blunt instrument just to provide the sort of financial services you're talking about. I want to transfer money to somebody in France or something like that. So before we wrap up the show I'd like to thank all the listeners out there in many countries around the world. I'm sure a number of you would like to look at Revolut and I'm sure many of you are already Revolut customers. We'll hear more in a minute from Nik about Revolut, where it's going, where it is. But I'd like to thank my brand partners to the podcast, Arch Over Smart, Simple and Transparent P2P Business Lending. Loans to £3,000,000 for SMEs delivering up to 7% secured and insured returns to lenders. Smart Pension are fast, secure and free. Check out their UK workplace pensions at autoenrolment.co.uk. Digital business consulting and technology services for top tier FS from start up to 7,000 people, 18 countries and $400,000,000 of revenue. So we've touched on Revolut a little bit in terms of discussing some of these themes but in terms of where you are today, of the thousands of listeners, many of whom won't be your clients, which ones should be checking you out, Nik, and in particular what things do you think that you have which people would be interested in and they should go and look at? And then, we'll later go and talk about where you're going in the future and what you're hoping to offer.
00:27:22 · Nik Storonsky, Tony Clark
[00:27:22] S0: Sure. I guess the main reason why people should try Revolut simply because we will save you a lot of money. So, for every €500 spent, we'll save probably like €30 to €40 And that's the best deal in the market at the moment. And it's also very to use. So that's the main reason why we kind of need to try using Revolut. [00:27:43] S2: And the other point is that, again, going back to the fact that everything was unbundled at the beginning. I mean TransferWise spent a lot of money on publicity and getting people out there but with TransferWise you do one thing whereas with Revolut you've got these other services surrounding it as well. [00:28:00] S0: Well, mean this is easier, right, as soon as you just get one up. If it provides you the ability to transfer money as well abroad easier than transfer wise, then why not to do it? [00:28:10] S2: And when I hear these kind of things, I always think they're quite nice as an individual, but like yourself from a business perspective I have frustrations. The banking services I get for my company are far more painful than the ones I get myself. I mean myself, my current account is free, or has been free, but my business bank account is £5.50 every month. Whenever somebody sends me money, costs something else or sending a cheque, it all costs things. [00:28:35] S0: That's another thing that we actually didn't discuss. We're issuing our Revolut for Business.
00:28:35 · Nik Storonsky, Tony Clark
[00:28:35] S0: That's another thing that we actually didn't discuss. We're issuing our Revolut for Business. [00:28:38] S2: Well, is this the thing I was going to go to lead on actually. I think I should be after your Revolut for Business or at least checking So it what will Revolut for Business do for businesses or people like me who, because the way the world works these days, have to be both a person and also a business to interface with the world. And when is that going to be ruled out? [00:28:55] S0: So we're rolling it mid May. And the whole value proposition, you will be able to open unique multicurrency bank account with us under three minutes. And then instantly can issue yourself like corporate costs to yourself or to your employees. You can also do cross border transfers and you will always get interbank FX rates.