Ukrainian FinTech: Out of the Box

FinTech is no longer just a start-up category and not simply an economic sector — technology is driving us to hegemony. Now every business is trying to do fintech. Ukrainian fintech has travelled the long path of evolution over the last five years. Helping in the banking crisis, being deregulated after a dozen M&As. Payment, lending and banking technologies were most kindly treated by investors. Other areas of global interest include mobile financial services, financial and account management, remittances and money transfers, robo advisors and insurance technologies. Crowdfunding, P2P lending, blockchain and crypto-currencies went through terminal growth and development stages.

Banks: FinTech Motherland

A study by USAID has shown that 32% of fintech companies in Ukraine are engaged in payments and remittances. The most well-known transaction companies are Portmone, LiqPay, iBox, EasyPay, and GlobalMoney. Around one fifth of these companies operate in the field of technology and infrastructure solutions. A prime example of this segment is Corezoid, whose services are used by PrivatBank. Another 14% of fintech are engaged in lending (Moneyveo, Compa­nion Finance).

State-owned Oschadbank has developed its own Internet and mobile ban­king, Oschad 24/7, as well as its own and external mobile wallets (Oschad Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Garmin Pay). These features allow access via bank payment cards to state websites and programs. For example, with their help, you can enter your own office in the PFC, it allows you to submit an electronic income declaration to the State Fiscal Service, receive means-tested subsidies from the state for travel using transport services, housing and utilities, and the like.

Monobank has shown how a classic Universalbank can find its own unique modern face. Quite similar to Monobank is Altbank, which is positioned as a virtual bank.

Alfa-Bank Ukraine launched a new online banking for individual entrepreneurs, called OK, Alfa! This service includes online registration, opening an account without needing to visit the bank, and exclusive offers from Kyivstar, Nova Poshta, Liga:Zakon and Prom.ua. Internet banking OK, Alpha! is the result of collaboration between Alfa-Bank Ukraine and Finik.Pro, which began after the latter won the tender for providing innovative solutions for creating a digital bank for the former and an open innovation platform. Most interesting was the case of Alfa-Bank using the start-up method for technical decision development.

These cases show that in the near future there will be no bank left that cannot be considered a FinTech company.

FinTech in telecom

Th latest trend is the convergence of the banking and telecom sectors. Services in both are becoming more similar with each passing day, driving us towards the use of similar technologies.

For example, Ukrainian mobile operator Kyivstar, in partnership with national payment system PROSTIR, has launched its own mobile payment and money transfer platform, SMART-GROSHI. This service is a fully-fledged mobile wallet, allowing people to make payments and money transfers. Kyivstar has chosen the national payment system PROSTІR, developed by the National Bank of Ukraine. National payment system PROSTІR is a retail payment system in which payments for goods and services, cash receipts and other operations with national currency, are all carried out using electronic means of payment, namely PROSTІR payment cards.

Paycell LLC, established in Ukraine as a subsidiary of Lifecell LLC, fully-owned by Turkcell, has officially received the status of a financial company. In the near future, Paycell LLC will provide clients access to financial services and money transfers in the national currency, credit devices, and payments using electronic money. The site paycell.com.ua indicates that Paycell Limited Liability Company was founded in 2017 and is a non-bank financial institution. The founders of Paycell LLC are Lifecell LLC, owning 99.99999% of the share capital, with UkrTauer LLC having 0.00001%. According to data, USD 2 million was invested in Paycell LLC. So, it can be said that all three mobile phone operators have now become fintech companies.

Terra Crypto

An entirely new fintech sector has been born in the crypto sphere. As the youngest and least developed in legal field, this sector is feeling the boom of tech development, and has been placed under close scrutiny by traditional finance markets. One of the most well-known projects is the Paytomat wallet, which allows an individual to store and ­manage ­cryptoactive assets with one reliable application. It supports mQR (Entrepreneur’s QR code) directly from the Paytomat Business application (available in the App Store and Play Market), and immediately after launching the Loyalty program, Paytomat customers get bonuses for each transaction. Paytomat is a decentralized infrastructure for crypto-currency payments with a built-in chain-based loyalty program. It encourages merchants and customers to either accept or spend their cryptocurrency globally. As a reward for being part of the ecosystem, both sellers and buyers receive appropriate assets that they can use to make payments within this ecosystem, install a master site, or receive various discounts and free services.

Prediction

Looking at past projects, makes it quite easy to predict the future for FinTech in 2019. FinTech demands a global reach, which will lead to both development of legislation and ­international players entering the ­market. At first, FinTech will continue its march towards other sectors. We are then likely to see M&As involving FinTech companies in retail, etc. This means that most businesses will very soon become fintech ones.