This week saw the first International FinTech Conference organised by the Department for International Trade, and held in London.
As predicted, the Chancellor used the platform to speak about Britain in a post-Brexit era, and looking to the wider world.
He also announced that Barclays is committing nearly £25 million over the next five years to fund a new fintech site in London.
Speaking at the conference, the Prime Minister’s Business Ambassador for FinTech, Alastair Lukies, told Newsnight that “challenger banks are showing, in certain segments, that you can do [things like] lending [and]…credit better”, but there are still challenges which fintechs, especially challenger banks, encounter.
Many challenger banks are being sold the dream of a pre-paid card providing the solution that many of their customers want, but this really can be a development cul-de-sac.
Where a pre-paid card simply affords the challenger the ability to hold money on a card, there is a difference between this and holding money in an account that can be accessed by a card.
The difference between these two may seem minute for some, but the latter provides the challenger the ability to grow their business, while the former only provides development challenges when the business seeks to scale up and expand its service offering.
Worse still, it’s likely that moving beyond a solution designed just for pre-paid cards will stretch the technology beyond breaking point, which could potentially provide future complications.
To solve this problem in the early stages of the business, challenger banks should opt for a platform which will give them the ability to offer multiple services, whether they choose to offer them initially to their customers or not.
By doing so, the challenger has the ability to expand in the future, without the need for extra development time. Additionally the platform should ensure that development complications during their expansion are kept to a minimum.
An account management platform, for example, will allow many different account types.
It would mean a customer would have the ability to own many accounts, and would also mean that an account could be owned by many customers, with each customer having different access rights and limits.
The card, therefore, is just one access point for the account.
In today’s fintech environment, with lots of challengers entering the market, your platform needs to be strong enough to withstand potential problems, but flexible enough to develop and adapt as circumstances change, whether that be the regulatory environment or when you are seeking to grow your business.
Trusek’s offering of a fully-fledged account management platform, and our team’s vast experience in the fintech sector, will afford you the peace of mind, and the stability, to ensure your business succeeds.
If you are looking to hear more about how a built, but bespoke, backend platform can help your business, email us at hello@trusek.com or call us on 020 7048 0470.