We are proud to say that Unifimoney is our first customer in the United States. To get to know our first US-based customer we sat down with Unifimoney founder Ben Soppitt to learn about the early days, the company’s efforts to create a card that benefits our damaged oceans, the future of the industry, and COVID-19 survival tips for businesses.
When was Unifimoney set up, and who was involved?
I had the idea that there was a huge opportunity to build an automated money management platform for young professionals for some time. To me it was obvious that this group was underserved by traditional providers and were actively seeking digitally optimised alternatives to traditional means in many parts of their lives including finance.
I assumed that any number of companies would launch this but every neobank that launched seemed to be coming to market with the same thing aimed at subprime consumers — consumers the Big Banks were not interested in. I wanted to create a new product category that integrated separate products and services in everyday money management — save, spend and invest and serve what I felt consumers really wanted which was to speak to their bank as little as possible but get better financial outcomes with minimal effort.
We took what Acorns, Robinhood and Wealthfront started and built on these innovations to create a highly integrated and automated money management platform. The catalyst for this was attending a meeting at Brex in early 2019 where the CEO talked about his startup journey. I knew a compelling credit card was critical for affluent millennials but it had not occurred to me that as a startup you could tackle that market. Brex showed it was possible. I created the company the next day and Ed Cortis my Co-Founder joined a few months later.
Can you share any stumbling blocks that were experienced in the early days?
Yes — turns out launching a credit card as a fintech startup is incredibly hard. The market just simply has not evolved from where it was 30 years ago. Launching a credit card program required many different players to be involved, each of which has a very low tolerance to risk, low interest in working with fintech’s and most won’t even talk to you if you have less than USD$5m raised. COVID-19 has made this situation even worse. So, the cost and time to launch a card are incredibly high, the expertise required is substantial, and you need to be able to navigate an opaque, complex and nearly closed financial ecosystem. The system is designed to help companies like Walmart or United Airlines launch a co-brand card, but not to serve small innovative fintechs.
We invested considerable time looking for the right key partners who shared our vision to bring innovation and effective competition to the USD$3.8 trillion credit card market. We feel extremely fortunate to have found such partners in Railsbank, Visa and i2c to make this happen.
“Fintechs are redefining how the next generation will consume financial services. Credit cards are the next frontier in fintech disruption and we are excited to be partnering with an amazing innovator Unifimoney to bring Credit Card as a Service to life.”
— Dov Marmor, Railsbank North America COO
What are Unifimoney’s biggest achievements so far?
Through a combination of good contacts and experience, we managed to go live with the MVP — Demand Deposit Account, Sweep and Debit Card — in 6 months with less than USD$50K spent. I think that must be some sort of record in terms of lean neobank startups, which is a strategy we intend to continue to ensure we can maximise returns to consumers.
I’m especially proud of our Visa Debit Card. Instead of the ubiquitous metal card — which has become the expected choice — we decided to go a different route. We used CPI’s Second Wave Recovered Ocean Plastic for the card core, which helps in a small way to reduce ocean pollution. We wanted to make this more than a symbolic statement though, and so we partnered with The Ocean Foundation and contribute to them each time either the debit or credit card is used.
But these milestones have only been possible with the team that came together to create and deliver this vision, both Unifimoney and our partners — like UMB Bank, Visa, Drivewealth, Innotech Corporation Vietnam, Railsbank, i2c and more. We have managed to find and attract some amazingly experienced people — our Risk and Compliance team have a combined over 115 years professional experience. We have people from the traditional payments and banking and people with expertise in technical experiential marketing. We need both skill sets — to navigate the financial ecosystem and to compete with incumbent banks spending billions in traditional marketing — it’s a true David and Goliath battle between us and the Big Banks.
Can you share any survival tips for businesses during difficult times such as COVID-19?
We were already working remotely and with a highly distributed team. Between us, the team speaks over 12 languages. If anything the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated our progress — with less time commuting it’s easier to have meetings externally. COVID-19 has also taught an entire generation that bad things happen to good people — no one working at Airbnb or Uber was expecting to be laid off in January. It’s brought the importance of financial resilience to the forefront; true financial resilience is something that is built over years and decades and the early you start the better.
Looking outside of Unifimoney now, how do you see your industry developing in the coming years?
Looking back, the last 10 years of fintech have really been about fragmentation —fintechs have taken on individual elements of financial services and optimized them. But whereas 20 years ago, it would be unusual to have more than 1 or 2 financial relationships it’s now not uncommon to have 10–15 financial apps on your phone. Ironically it’s become more complex, not less, to manage your money. We know the vast majority of people hate complexity especially in a low interest category like money management (we all like to earn it and spend it but most people don’t find managing it very exciting).
We see the next decade being about re-bundling of financial services — but by fintechs not traditional banks. Fintechs are able to bring best-of-breed solutions into a single platform, whereas traditional banks don’t play well with others. The traditional corporate mindset still dominates at banks; they feel they need to build everything themselves. Rebundling means integrated products become possible, which in turn makes automation possible — doing the manual labor of financial management for consumers and optimising their returns rather than exploiting them for the benefit of banks profits.
What is the future of fintech?
We think the future is going to be around specific financial portals for specific consumer segments. Much of the underlying infrastructure could be shared but the services themselves will be designed for the specific audience they are serving. Could be doctors, lawyers, construction workers etc.
Fintech is going to solve the problem that traditional financial services companies are woeful at; segmentation and personalisation will allow fintechs to offer far better value for money. Aside from the top 1% of private clients, someone walking into Wells Fargo or Chase earning USD$25K is offered essentially the same service and products as someone earning USD$250K.
These new financial services portals will aggregate best-of-breed solutions in the market and package them for their audience specifically. They’ll offer communities the right selection of services in the right way and remove a lot of the complexity inherent in the current market — helping consumers increase their returns and accelerate their speed and probability to achieve financial resilience.
Head to Unifimoney’s website for more information on what they offer.
Go to the Railsbank website to learn how we can help any bank, business or brand rapidly become a fintech.
