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Adyen x TNW Founders Day

We had the pleasure of attending Adyen x TNW’s Founder Day and had the chance to interview a few FinTech firms….with a twist.

Adyen – Jakub 

Can you please explain what your company does…..to my grandmother?

Dear Granny,
Adyen makes your life easy and simple – it helps you get to your relatives with Uber without carrying cash because the app will charge your card automatically. We work in the background of lots of different businesses and make these seamless payments possible, such as with Netflix,  so that Granny can enjoy Netflix’n’Chill with Grandpa.

 What is the funniest/most interesting story or fact you can think of about Adyen or your office?

Our building is quite tall for Amsterdam standards, with a 360 rooftop bar that hosted a pretty epic KingsDay celebration.  Without revealing too much, from a birds-eye view the rooftop would have looked like a huge Heineken advertisement.

What is Adyen’s key differentiator to competitors?

 We do everything end-to-end, taking care of the entire life cycle of the payment from moment of initiation up to settlement and any intermediary parts. 

What are the main hurdles for Adyen in the Dutch/European market?

The biggest talking point at the moment is implementation of PSD2, in many ways it will regulate the online payments landscape, introducing authentication mandates that will force the market to put much more effort into secure payments methods. 

If one of your customers wanted to sell sand to beach-goers, how could Adyen help?

We could offer a really nice subscription plan where, via our lovely tokenization feature, in a very secure way we would make sure that payments were regularly taken from your account so that you have a ready supply of dry and luscious sand to take to the beach.

SEEDRS – Charnez

Can you please explain what your company does…..to my grandmother?

 We enable people to raise money to set up growth and development projects.

What is the funniest/most interesting story or fact you can think of about SEEDRS or your office?

A ‘colleague’ attended a team meeting but had to face sideways because he couldn’t remove the weekend’s glitter from half of his face.

What is SEEDRS’ key differentiator to competitors?

The seamless nature and high quality of technology (that’s why Revolut chose us) compared to any other platform – can put 10,000 investors on platform and raise capital from 10 euros a piece.

What are the main hurdles for SEEDRS in the Dutch/European market?

 Regulatory challenges – we’re currently lobbying the European Parliament for crowdfunding license regulation.

If one of your customers wanted to sell sand to beach-goers, how could SEEDRS help?

Provide the platform to reach all the beach goers around the world.

IBM – Justin

Can you please explain what your company does…..to my grandmother?

Well she knows the ATM, which was an IBM invention, so we’ve been in fintech a very long time, starting with POS cash services, but now we help banks keep all their records (so they don’t lose them) and help build machines that facilitate transaction accounting.

What is the funniest/most interesting story or fact you can think of about IBM or your office?

I once hosted a hackathon and got to see a lot of amazing fintech projects, but none more amazing than the “Mortgage Gap Year” – a mortgage that enabled you to put your mortgage on hold for a period of time.

What is IBM’s key differentiator to competitors?

Enterprise is our bread and butter and has been for a long time. We’re an enterprise company and do a lot with open source (which not enough people know about, which is a shame) and aren’t focussed on pushing our own cloud but to embrace innovation across the board – via partnerships etc.

What are the main hurdles for IBM in the Dutch/European market?

 I work in the US, and there banks are stuck in quite an old-fashioned mindset – so getting them out of this resistive mentality.

If one of your customers wanted to sell sand to beach-goers, how could IBM help?

Well, they will need to see if that sand came from that beach, whether it’s authentic sand, and we could provide these traceability services (potentially via blockchain).

Bitpanda – Benedikt

Can you please explain what your company does…..to my grandmother?

Basically, we are a very easy-to-use platform for investments, including cryptocurrencies – very easy for her to send, store, and move investments.

What is the funniest/most interesting story or fact you can think of about Bitpanda or your office?

We used to get very interesting requests, including people turning up at the office with suitcases full of cash asking for it to be exchanged into cryptocurrency (which we didn’t do because even though we don’t have to be, we are fully banking compliant and therefore stuck to the AML/KYC requirements that banks abide by).

Also, an older gentleman came to the office with two handfuls of panda-bears as an offering for the team to help him reset his 2FA – a lovely gentleman who I’m still in touch with and regularly sends us crypto-updates.

What is Bitpanda’s key differentiator to competitors?

 I don’t like to talk bad about competitors, but users from other platforms usually say that apps and interfaces can be a bit clunky – whereas all of our apps and sites are centred around the user and useable intuitive interfaces.

What are the main hurdles for Bitpanda in the Dutch/European market?

Biggest challenge is that we’re in the EU, which on one hand is a blessing, but on the other hand every country interprets regulations differently which creates an uncertain landscape.

If one of your customers wanted to sell sand to beach-goers, how could Bitpanda help?

Accept cryptocurrency as payment: it’s mobile, not many people have cash on the beach, it’s perfect.

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