When not relaxing with ice cold beer and chilling out summer dance tunes, the team at PayKey looks to build partnerships with banks to offer customers instant access to financial services.

What is PayKey – what problem are you solving?

PayKey enables banks and digital wallets to address one of the most significant challenges they currently face: creating customer engagement in today’s hyper-connected space. Social messaging apps have become a prominent communication channel for customers at all ages, and while banks already offer services through dedicated apps, using them is a high-friction experience that disrupts the natural flow of the social conversation.

PayKey streamlines financial services into users’ digital lives, redefining the customer experience and setting a new phase in the mobile banking evolution. PayKey enables banks and mobile wallets to offer customers instant access to financial services, including P2P payments, balance check and more – from within ANY mobile app, including all messaging apps. Our patented Social Banking Solution™ is based on a state-of-the-art smartphone keyboard that includes a branded banking button. This button opens a menu of services, fully customized to the offerings of the service provider, creating a frictionless experience, driving engagement and keeping services always in front of customers.

Your offering depends on establishing partnerships with banks and other providers – what do new FinTech entrants need to do to establish successful partnerships?

It all starts with understanding our customers’ pain points and learning to adopt their point of view. A great example for this is the entrance of Big Tech to the personal finance ecosystem: the introduction of Google Pay, Amazon Pay and of course Facebook Libra creates a real shakeup for banks. Our job was to position PayKey as a solution that can help banks keep their competitive advantage in face of these powerful new incumbents. Building this partnership is a long journey: trust is something you work hard to earn and is constantly being tested. I’m pleased to say that today our customer portfolio speaks to itself, with 15 banks and wallets that went live with PayKey, including mega brands such as ING, Standard Chartered and HSBC.

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PayKey took part at the RBI Elevator Lab – What did you learn/What did you gain as a company?

Taking part at Raiffeisen’s accelerator program was a great experience for us. Aside from the bank’s professional mentorship and constructive feedback on our solution, it served as a real door opener for us to the European banking market. The Elevator Lab team didn’t just support us – they joined forces with our team, connecting us with business leaders and decision makers in banks all over Europe, and helping us come up with the best use-case for each bank. Since completing this program, we went live with First Direct – HSBC’s digital arm in the UK and have several more European banks in our pipeline.

What advice would you give new startups in this space? 

Make sure you have a crystal clean value proposition, and be prepared to invest a lot of effort and time in communicating it. Patience and persistence are really the name of the game here: it takes countless runs to perfect your pitch. You then need to work your way up till you get facetime with the right banking executive who is open-minded enough to see the potential of your innovation and invest in it. In practical terms, it means attending and presenting at dozens of industry events and conferences and cultivating ongoing relationships with hundreds of contacts from prospect banks and other industry stakeholders. Another thing is mapping the banks you’re targeting and identifying the relevant decision makers. Banks are complex, multi-layered organizations. Sometimes, the best approach would be building a relationship with someone at the bank who can advocate your innovation from within – as opposed to try approaching the C level executives directly.

We have an array of craft beers and independent music at FinTECHTalents – Give us a great song to listen to while we sip your favourite tipple (please also list your favourite drink!) 

Weihenstephan wheat beer on tap, ice cold of course, with Tiësto’s Summer Night deep house special… Can’t beat that mix!

Meet PayKey – one of our 2019 FinTech Stories companies – at FTT19 this November.