Meniga helps incumbent banks keep fintech fear at bay

A VC as soon as informed me that anxiety was the greatest sales resource ever invented. That was in reference to the hockey stick advancement his cybersecurity startup was viewing, thanks to a raft of tales in the media about large profile instances of firms currently being hacked. But might the exact same be explained of banking companies and the pending danger of fintech? Arguably, they have significantly to anxiety.

From possessing some of the most worthwhile and minimal-hanging elements of their company unbundled by upstarts, this kind of as TransferWise (cash transfer), Nutmeg (personal savings), and PensionBee (pensions), to out proper ‘challenger’ banking companies that are re-inventing the current account and will lend out buyer deposits in the sort of overdrafts, a company product at the main of standard banking.

And then there is the major elephant in the area: huge tech firms. If fintech is definitely about monetising access to a consumer’s economical details — access that the banking companies are currently being forced to deliver by forthcoming EU and U.K. open banking regulation — the likes of Google, Facebook, and, to a lesser extent, Apple and Amazon, just can’t afford to pay for not to bounce onboard the fintech train.

Enter Meniga, a London-headquartered fintech startup, with R&D in Iceland, that provides digital banking engineering to some of the world’s biggest banking companies. Its various products and solutions contain a program layer that bridges the hole concerning a bank’s legacy tech infrastructure and a fashionable API, making it simpler to build purchaser-pleasant digital banking ordeals on best and to comply with forthcoming regulation this kind of as PSD2.

People new digital banking ordeals typically show up in a bank’s cell application and contain points like personal finance manager functionality, a Facebook-esque action feed to assist clients retain track of their paying out, or the new Fitbit-inspired “Challenges” module, a kind of economical well being tracker that harnesses social and gamification to gently nudge a bank’s clients into greater budgeting.

“Today’s banking companies are underneath pressure to innovate and strengthen their buyer ordeals on-line and nonetheless they are beholden to legacy procedures and legacy techniques and are normally sick equipped to deliver their clients with planet course person experience in digital banking,” Meniga co-founder and CEO Georg Ludviksson tells me.

“Meniga has constructed a track record as a strong innovation husband or wife to banking companies and its program alternatives assist some of the world’s biggest banking companies utilise their details to make their on-line and cell banking more personalised and inspiring”.

Ludviksson’s coining of Meniga as an “innovation partner” to banking companies isn’t only startup talk, nor is it bluster (the Meniga founder talks in gentle, regarded as Icelandic tones). The corporation retains 5-working day onsite design and style sprints with its banking customers, and final calendar year it performed more than eighty person screening classes in four nations around the world — all over again, numerous of them in partnership with the banking companies.

In addition, Meniga operates what Ludviksson says is a exceptional “sandpit” notion that sees the fintech startup offer you a direct to purchaser product or service for Icelanders that serves as a screening ground for product or service screening and R&D that in change gains its customers. “It’s a web site with no cost personal finance equipment with more than thirty for every cent of all Icelandic homes registered. The site’s people are consumers from all walks of lifestyle with every single individuality type,” he says.

Meniga is also performing with banking companies to introduce new details-pushed products and services and company types. The notion is to help digital banking people to “better understand, take care of and make the most of their money” by supplying personal finance equipment, insights and customized features, this kind of as via its card-linked features product or service for retailers.

It’s a typical details participate in: give us access to your economical details and we’ll give you some thing of value in return. Banking companies, immediately after all, sit on a heck of a large amount of details, which they seldom do a very good position of exploiting, for their personal advantage or that of their clients. Meniga is encouraging to transform that, even though the activity of attempting to persuade banking companies to embrace a digital-very first way of thinking just before a new or old competitor does, is becoming a large amount simpler.

Meanwhile, the corporation, which counts the likes of Santander, Intesa, Commerzbank, ING Immediate, and mBank as customers, has shut €7.five million in new funding, bringing full elevated to €21 million due to the fact currently being launched in 2009. The round was led by Nordic VC Industrifonden, with participation from current traders Velocity Money, Frumtak Ventures and Kjolfesta.