On Friday 9 November, Allen & Overy hosted Holland FinTech’s monthly meetup. Holland FinTech CEO Don Ginsel opened proceedings with an introduction to Holland FinTech and its diverse ecosystem. Herald Jongen, partner at Allen & Overy, lauded the ecosystem and its benefits before outlining their enthusiasm for the future of fintech with their own development space in London, Fuse.
 
Bringing tokenised investment to the market
Both Jochem Wieringa, co-founder of Maven 11 Capital, and Rob Verheul, co-founder of Liqwith, were quick to highlight the multitude of benefits that tokenised investment technology can provide. Whilst mirroring each other’s insight that it is the application of blockchain rather than cryptocurrency where the value lies, the companies have taken distinct approaches to realising it.
Liqwith aims to “Bridge the gap between traditional capital markets and the blockchain community,” by facilitating SMEs to tokenise their shares. This substantially reduces the cost of obtaining capital, and increases the ease of access to it, Rob explains. Maven 11 Capital, an investment firm solely focused on blockchain technology, rather sees untold value due to the structure of the blockchain market: “Which differs from traditional equity investments that are very hard to exit in the early stages and are thus more risky.”
What can we do with data?
Understanding the ubiquitous need to manage, store and process data, two of our pitchers, OptInsight and Quasar DB, tackled the challenge by providing more effective and efficient solutions, respectively.
Tjeerd van der Stroom of OptInsight highlighted the recent regulations governing private data as “business opportunities” that can promote more effective personal data usage. He explained that with OptInsight, which is a “compliance-based customer retention solution for GDPR”, businesses can enjoy better customer engagement by consensually acquiring and utilising personal preferences.  Comparatively, Jean-Claude Tagger (COO of Quasar DB) pitched the efficiency with which Quasar DB allows you to “store everything forever, and query it in real time”.  Responding to why he was at the meetup, Jean-Claude stated that as many of their customers are in the fintech sphere, “we need to be more knowledgeable to better serve them”. Moreover, he wanted to  convey that they are more than 100 times faster than many competitors.
The difference between giving and paying

Recognising that it is the user of a transaction who must be satisfied, pitchers from Franx and Givt took to the stage to round out the meetup. Jaspar Wolf pitched that Franx was “obsessed with customer needs”, which is why they continually collected and acted on feedback. This has culminated in a payments solution that provides a singular IBAN for holding up to 26 currencies in one account, with transparent prices and an entirely online offering. He further “distinguished Franx from competitors” as it offers currency hedging. Comparatively, Sjoerd van Oort of Givt pitched a solution that the payments sector was “unwilling” to provide.  Sjoerd stresses there is a “major difference between paying and giving”, as the giver wants something different from the payer, they want “a single and simple solution to giving in all situations, like you had with cash”. This was demonstrated by Sjoerd as he waived his phone over a church collect bag to ‘Givt’ anonymously, autonomously and even without wifi.