Fintech
Flyfish, a fintech company, now the leading marketplace for financial services
According to Flyfish founder Michael Zetser, the fintech world it needs a radical revolution, firstly to ensure that the hundreds of millions of people left out of financial services can access them and to save businesses from having to use different providers for each of the services they need.
Flyfish offers a unique marketplace concept to make most if not all financial services more accessible and convenient for everyone. In other words, you don’t need to look for a financial service provider, but open a Flyfish account and Flyfish will seamlessly provide you with the solution.
Flyfish, through its platform, has partnered with various financial institutions and other financial service providers around the world, allowing Flyfish to offer tailored solutions based on each customer’s needs.
“For every financial need we find a solution”
Founded early last year, Flyfish aims to become the world’s largest marketplace for financial services, the intersection where all fintech technologies meet.
“Using the BaaS model we connect multiple services to a single platform,” Zetser said, referring to the “Banking as a Service” protocol. This unique platform brings together all services to work in harmony.” From left: Ilanit Madmoni, head of the innovation unit at the Bank of Israel; Rahav Shalom-Revivo, head of FinTech and Cyber Innovations at the Ministry of Finance; Meital Raviv, Head of Fintech & Innovation at KPMG Israel; and Justine Zwerling, Head of Israeli Primary Markets at the London Stock Exchange Group (credit: DIANA RUBINSTEIN).
By acting as a bridge connecting numerous fintech providers, Flyfish is able to consolidate all of its financial services into a single accessible product, meeting the diverse needs of essentially any customer.
When a new customer opens their Flyfish account, Flyfish seamlessly connects them to all the necessary services with a single onboarding.
Flyfish currently works with around a dozen international providers, offering a wide range of services, including debit cards, IBAN accounts, cryptocurrency exchange, payroll and different payment methods.
As a one-stop shop for financial services, Flyfish aims to help both individual and corporate customers. Announcement
As for individual customers, the startup is committed to offering solutions even to those who are excluded from traditional banking services.
“When we talk about under-banking, we might immediately think of developing countries such as some African nations, but people are usually very surprised to learn that even in the UK, around 14% of the adult population does not have access to an bank account and rely solely on cash transactions.”
“Sometimes these people don’t have a traditional education; sometimes they’re a little outside the box, and at the beginning of their life they didn’t need a bank account, and today traditional banks don’t accept them. This lack of access to banking services is a major challenge in both developing countries and the developed world.”
According to Zetser, the way Flyfish is built allows it to work with the full spectrum of customers because it can match each of them to the right financial institutions.
“For every financial need we find a solution,” he said.
This also includes the needs of corporate customers.
“Let’s think about a company with operations in Israel, Germany and Cyprus,” he said. This company will have to pay salaries in three different countries. It will also have to file and pay taxes and other payments to local authorities, and then likely open and manage local bank accounts in each country, possibly requiring a debit card in each. The company will need to go through the onboarding process with each institution it wishes to partner with and will need to manage and access each account separately. This is inefficient, time-consuming, and makes it more difficult than necessary to keep track of the finances in each account.”
With Flyfish everything becomes simpler.
“The company can enjoy the same services with an individual Flyfish account; we take care of connecting to each financial service required,” Zetser said.
At the moment, Flyfish is focusing on the European market.
“We are working with the European Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs) and are already in the process of signing partnerships with several international suppliers which will soon allow us to extend our reach to Australia, the United States and Asia,” notes Zetser. “We are also starting to accept clients outside of European jurisdiction.”
One of Flyfish’s current clients is an established e-commerce company with offices in several countries across Europe and beyond.
“Before working with Flyfish, they had to manage accounts in at least four different banks, with all the resources that entails,” Zetser explained. “Now they enjoy a single point of access to all of them, receive consolidated reports and can manage bank accounts simultaneously from a single dashboard.”
Another benefit of bringing a multitude of services onto a unified platform is that customers often realize there are additional financial products they could benefit from.
“For example, this e-commerce company decided to offer debit cards to many of its employees,” Zetser said. “They weren’t even aware of the need beforehand. When a company approaches Flyfish, we study their financial needs and find the right solutions for them.”
Flyfish has been instrumental in transforming the financial services experience for its corporate and individual customers.
“There is a story of a person in the UK who had never had a bank account and for whom the ability to start making and receiving electronic bank payments was life-changing,” Zetser shared.
“There are approximately 1.4 billion people in the world who do not have access to banking services,” he added. “We view access to banking as a fundamental human right, and one of our company’s goals is to realize this vision.”
Zetser says that looking to the future, Flyfish aims to revolutionize fintech.
“In our vision, individuals or businesses will not need to turn to specific financial services providers, but rather will rely on platforms like Flyfish to provide all the pieces they need to complete their financial puzzle,” he concluded.
This article was written in collaboration with Flyfish.