London Fintech Podcast
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.
00:29:13 · Tony Clark
[00:29:13] S2: Excellent. Well, I think I should definitely check you out actually because it's one of the things, it's one of the annoying irritations. I mean in the scheme of things, whatever it is, 5 a month for a banking fee isn't infinite. But the annoyance I have with my current bank, which will probably remain nameless, is very high. So this kind of irritation factor with banking services is one thing which is certainly helping Fintech. I mean there are lots of logical reasons that you hear about why the incumbents have got advantages, and they do. One of which is that they're huge and they've got vast sums of money. They can get it wrong for twenty years and still buy Revolut and Zopa and all that kind of stuff if they got it wrong in twenty years' time, and this cost of capital and all these kind of things. But one of the factors which you can't quantify and therefore often doesn't make these reports or management consultants' analyses is irritation. If you're really annoyed with somebodyI'm annoyed with three, my mobile phone customer at the moment. One of my daughters has got three phones and I've been on the sort of call to help center in India for like an hour at the time trying to sort basic stuff out. And you get told, Oh, you can't do that, sir, and you can't do this, sir, and blah, blah, blah. And that irritation factor means at that point, I just don't care. I'm just going to jump into anybody else's arms kind of thing. So I think that I should probably come back because the opportunity I think that exists in Fintech to provide banking services for small businesses is really very high. And apart from the likes of Funding Circle doing sort of loans to small businesses, I have come across very few at all that are actually doing banking services of businesses. And I don't think I've come across anybody in The UK who's not only going to be offering it, but has your background in terms of doing whatever the number was I said before, 21,000,000 transactions for a value of £2,500,000,000?
00:30:50 · Nik Storonsky, Tony Clark
[00:30:50] S0: You know, we were now registering 50 to 70 companies every day for Revolut for Business. And we now have like more than 8,000 companies who registered already for Revolut for Business. Of Some them are very big, like in the Virgin Atlantic, Emirates. [00:31:03] S2: Yes, they're a bit bigger than me, they are. [00:31:05] S0: That's okay. I mean, this is like self serve interface. So you do everything yourself through kind of web interface. [00:31:10] S2: That sounds excellent actually. And on that basis, I expect you to be tenfold greater. And going back to where I started, as to say, having heard from Bolton about you guys last summer, I can see why they and their very serious blue chip VCs in London, I can see why they are very keen on you guys because in the short term hype and flag waving and lots of press coverage can work really well as transfer was found. But over the long term, as Atom Bank is seeing despite all its money, the one thing that does succeed is ratings like 4.5 out of five on Google Play Store. [00:31:44] S0: You can
00:31:44 · Nik Storonsky, Tony Clark
[00:31:44] S0: You can [00:31:45] S2: get a nice article about you in the Guardian or the Telegraph saying, Oh, it's a wonderful company, blah, blah, blah. Don't have that difference. But in the modern worldand it's not just this cliche of millennialsI mean, even my father looks at a phone now and uses apps and that kind of stuff. Anybody can look at the ratings. As you mentioned, Amazon before, you look at a rating for a book and it gets one out of five out of 100 reviews or a pod recording device or something, you're never going to buy it and vice versa. You guys are succeeding in the court of public opinion, which is the democratizing way. So I wish you every success in the future, Nik, and I shall be definitely checking out your business offering in May. Thanks for that. For listening. If you have consulting, advisory slash non exec, or media needs in the FS or Fintech space, get in touch with me at mike londonfintech podcast dot com.