iBAN Wallet
iBAN Wallet - the digital banking alternative at your fingertips.
- Location
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City of London,
United Kingdom
Categories: Finance & Payments Digital Mixed B2B/B2C
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Investment
sought: - £50,001
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Equity
offered: - 0.25%
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Investment
amount: - £59,031
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Valuation
(pre-money): - £20,070,491
Idea
Introduction
iBAN evolved from a P2P lending platform into what will soon be a complete digital banking alternative. Trust in banks has dropped dramatically since the financial crash and people are looking to technology for a simpler, more transparent alternative that offers them greater control.
The iBAN Wallet combines two emerging markets - the sharing economy and crowdlending - with traditional banking services to offer a single, simple and secure platform for managing finances.
The app is currently being built with a mission to enable customers to:
- Connect & manage their existing bank accounts
- Securely store & access their money
- Learn about their spending habits & create savings plans
- Make free international money transfers
- Access their funds instantly via a contactless card
- Invest in alternative & traditional financial products
- Create & manage their own investment portfolio
We are also building a P2P lending platform that will make crowdlending easy to manage from within the app. We have already received over £100M in loan requests, so we’re ready to hit the ground running.
Please note: This is a private campaign available only to existing investors in iBan Wallet to pre-empt on the £50,000 commitment received by the company.
Intended impact
Technology has improved at a staggering rate over the past two decades, providing super-specialised individual services which far exceed anything currently offered by banks.
Yet, often these services are not offered to individuals because they conflict with the obscure and complex system created by banks to enhance their own control and profit. Security remains clunky, loan applications are still a manual and time-consuming process, and moving money around is far from simple.
iBAN seeks to disrupt this status quo. The iBAN Wallet combines a range of specialist third-party technology providers to provide a complete, streamlined alternative banking experience.
Our aim is to give users access to a full complement of banking services from their mobile device absolutely free - other than a small fee on loan agreements - with the potential to add new technologies as they mature.
Once released the app will allow users to:
Substantial accomplishments to date
iBAN has already launched four successful crowdfunding campaigns to provide seed capital - three on Crowdfunder (UK & German markets) and another on Seedrs in April 2017 - attracting over 100 investors to raise a total of £111,648 at a valuation of £2,093,055.
This money was used to create the complete app and back-end system, forming partnerships with specialist technology operators to offer secure banking and loan services.
Some of our investors also became ambassadors, increasing brand awareness and gaining commission for referrals. We are growing this sales network to include some partners who will leverage their experience in locating new customers in each target country or region.
As a result, over the last 12 months our growth in the number of loan requests increased 32x, instead of the 10x projected.
Monetisation strategy
While we plan for the iBAN Wallet to be forever free to the mass market user, we intend to charge a small fee for loan agreements made through the platform.
The business model is simple: when a borrower receives investment, an admin and legal diligence fee is collected as a percentage of the total transaction and dependent on the specific arrangement of terms agreed with the borrower.
All of our other services are free.
Use of proceeds
1) App maintenance and development.
The iBAN Wallet is a dynamic application which will be updated to improve current usability and include new features in order to remain at the cutting edge.
Smart contracts which use blockchain technology are an intuitive upgrade for the Marketplace feature, where lenders and borrowers are treated fairly and transparently.
2) Licences.
By obtaining our own licences, iBAN Wallet will be able to provide a range of services currently being outsourced. The result would be a larger margin for the business and better returns for investors.
These licences will incur legal fees for the P2P, EMI, AIS, and Banking licences.
3) Further agreements.
User identification and KYC via voice, payments made via Apple or Android Pay, and in-app insurance purchases.
Loan origination from additional countries.
Market
Target market
iBAN Wallet is ready to tap into the already large number of people in the UK and Spain - particularly Millennials and Gen Z - who are disillusioned with the traditional banking system and open to embracing an alternative finance solution.
Technology available for consumer and business banking is archaic: transactions are simple lists without any insight into where your money's going, it takes days for your balance to update, and you sometimes you even have to call your bank to replace a lost or stolen card. Applying for finance is time-consuming and expensive, while the interest charged never comes close to the interest paid to savers.
In the UK alone, savers hold over £700bn in their bank accounts earning very little interest, not including the 13 million people who invest in an ISA (either Cash or Stocks and Shares). Crowdlending presents an opportunity for these savers to earn more interest, while providing a more cost-effective alternative for borrowers.
Characteristics of target market
Banking and finance is one of the world's largest industries, accounting for $17 billion in sales in 2016 alone, up from $14.5 billion in 2015.However, traditional banks are losing market share because of their tendency to be expensive, slow, and cumbersome, using outdated technology.
Acceptance of alternative finance was first demonstrated by the likes of Zopa in the UK 13 years ago, which has since lent more than £3.14bn to UK customers and have an estimated valuation greater than £500m. Zopa is now approaching its launch as a bank.
And the sector will surely only continue to grow. A Morgan Stanley study estimates that the global marketplace for crowdlending will reach $290Bn by 2020, with a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 51% from 2014-2020.
Marketing strategy
iBAN Wallet's user acquisition rate will be underpinned by its own community - once the app has been launched a user will be able to send money to anyone on their mobile phone contact list who then receives a notification that their money can be collected through the application. We believe that this will drive an exponential growth pattern, plateauing at market saturation.
To reach a critical mass of users, we intend to focus the bulk of our marketing effort on SEO optimisation and SEM, driving customers to our business through the creation of high quality content and market-leading products.
We will also use promotional partnerships and social media to promote ourselves via an outbound strategy, growing brand awareness within our target markets.
Competition strategy
The iBAN Wallet distinguishes itself from the competition by providing a virtually costless alternative for a range of financial products. By integrating these services into a single, easy-to-use app, we offer a much greater range of services than many other alternative banking platforms while improving usability over traditional banks.
Due to the nature of the model, we plan that the app will be forever free for the majority of users. We believe that other alternative banking platforms will struggle to keep services free as they add features they hadn’t planned for as well as in the face of increased competition.