I was looking forward to creating app like Alipay for US/EU market, then I realized Venmo exists. What do you think, is it still worth trying to compete? Outside of Venmo we don't really have any other competition.

In the EU there are a lot apps and fintechs that have those features. I would guess in the US it's the same.

@FilipeRamalho could you name some? I tried looking for them and couldn't really find them. We are talking about apps that are accepted in many places. Also, our app is more similar to WeChat along with WeChat Pay

@DawidCyron Online it's for example Ideal, Sofort, Amazon Pay (slowly starting) and Paypal. For stores it's different per bank and country. In Germany it's Google Pay (only certain banks) or Payback Pay (all banks) through NFC.

For direct transfer from person to person there are a lot of apps even from the banks themselves. In Germany for example Kwitt, MoneyBeam, Cringle. And if you can't use an app for direct transfer you can use the sepa system which has now instant transfer (slowly rolling out to all banks) for which you only need the IBAN.

@FilipeRamalho yeah, but we are still very different. All platforms that you mentioned imply heavy fees. When you pay with credir card (Google Pay also counts here) around 3.5% of the payments go to bank. Our platform skips banks and credit cards. You transfer money to our apps account, and then you can enjoy much lower fees. After calculations, we were able to bring fees to around 1.2-1.5 percent. Also, fees are applied only on transactions with stores.

@DawidCyron Every service is without fee for the user if connect directly with your bank account.

@FilipeRamalho services, yes. But banks and credit card companies still take their fees. And we can lower them significantly.

if you wan't to know how it's done you should have look at denmark and especially sweden. where shops are allowed not to accept cash and banks not even have cash in their brick and mortar shops. Even the busdriver complaines when you want to pay with coins.

However paying with the mobilephone at the point of sale is a hassle compared to paying with contactless debit card.

So it is one thing to found a payment service like paypal, paytim or alipay and another beeing a bank as a app. Like N26 or Monzo. So unless you have a genious idea that makes it less painfull to use with my iPhone than with my contactless debit card, and you have loads of money to burn, i would suggest you find something else in the fintech sector.

Good news is that the EU requires banks to be more open and forced them to offer an API for their financial services.
https://goo.gl/geJmBb
Open Banking Europe - Building a digital Europe, together

@DawidCyron The services I mentioned are without fees as you connect directly to the bank. And almost everyone has a bank account. You give them your IBAN and sign a contract with them so they can burden directly you debit bank account.

@heyheni In Germany it's still only slowly building up. If we had Google Pay and Apple pay with all major banks we would only need more NFC terminals in local commerce so life without cash would be possible. Until then I will get an account from the fintech bunq as they already have that.

@FilipeRamalho "Nur bares ist wahres" (german proverb: only cash is real)

@heyheni less painful, hard to say. We can make it as easy as paying with credit card. We are starting to work on ability to pay with NFC, using our own terminals that we will provide (really cheap to manufacture) to the shops.

@DawidCyron Use the standard NFC Payment protocol all the other apps use. I don't the implementation of it, but I know a lot of apps work right away with the NFC terminals most stores use.

@FilipeRamalho I'm dumb. Some reason I though that it's a closed protocol. I feel bad now...

@DawidCyron I don't know either, but as said I think it must be possible to use it as other apps connect right away.

So after explaining more about our app, what do you think? Is it worth trying? Let's say it was your idea, would you work on it? What if we could secure founding?

@FilipeRamalho I think I know how with a Maestro card/Mastercard and Tap on Phone Terminal SDK from Mastercard

@DawidCyron You want to make an app which can be used to pay with the phone at stores, send money and pay online ? That wouldn't be anything new. It already exists. Bunq and SEPA transfer for online payment or Google Pay/Apple Pay supported banks and online payment services and an transfer app and soon many banks will have that services themselves. In Germany the Sparkasse has already direct transfer, soon will have NFC payment and already is supported by Sofort.

Conclusion the features you mentioned are already availabe for most EU/US citzens and bringing them together is only possible if you open a fintech bank and make a cool app for it or you use the system mentioned by @heyheni, but only direct transfer would work.

@FilipeRamalho alright, thanks for the answer

@FilipeRamalho also, I'm in Germany right now. It's sad that in many places you still can't pay contactless.

@DawidCyron I live in metropolitan area so I see a lot of contactless terminals in stores, but the share of contactless terminals in local commerce is near zero.

@DawidCyron

Mobile payment in the shop
1. your're hands are full of goods.
2. put the goods on the counter/conveyor belt
3. you have to tell the cashier that you want to pay with your phone
4. take phone out of pocket
5. unlock phone
6. search the payment app in the multitude of app icons.
7. enter a passcode for the app
8. tap on "i want to pay"
9. hold your mobilephone against a bluetooth beacon (because apple don't allow the use of nfc)
10. confirm payment.
11. pack your goods.

contactless payment
1. your're hands are full of goods.
2. put the goods on the counter/conveyor belt
3. take out your purse and hold it on to the terminal
4. pack your goods.

you see it's not a technological problem, it's a interaction design problem.

@heyheni If you had NFC would you think this is better ? https://together.bunq.com/topic/...

The Single tap ☝
1. Open the bunq app.
2. Got to the Tap & Pay card (or widget).
3. Press “Pay”.
4. Authenticate with fingerprint or Tap & Pay code.
5. Tap your device against the terminal.

The Double tap ✌
1. Tap the device against the terminal (1st time).
2. Authenticate with fingerprint or device unlock.
3. Tap device again (2nd time).

https://bloomberg.com/graphics/...

This article inspired us to start our work on this project. It's actually interesting and worth reading

@FilipeRamalho still it's a workaround for the barrier of the phone operating system and too much work.
And apple won't allow the use of nfc of the iphone except for it's own apple pay.

and from a business perspective....
You'll need a lot of capital to convince the retailers to use your system because they allready have a payment terminal, why do they need another one?. Then you need another huge amount for the point of sale payment infrastructure. Then your app needs to developed. There are a million laws and restrictions. You need cerificates which cost alot. Fraud detection, assurance, money reserve. And you've still haven't made a dime. Now you need another huge sum for marketing and advertisment on a massive scale.
And you dont know how if that's enough to convince end users to open the playstore, download your app, register, and than using it on a regular ly basis. Unless your a multinational ass rich company setting up a Payment service is a nightmare.

if you're a fintech you rather concentrate on the business to business sector. Way less people to convince.

@DawidCyron It may be so in the US, but in Europe you mostly use the debit card, so you only pay the monthly bank fee or interest for overdrawing the account

@heyheni our app may not be targeted for B2B, but to be honest, businesses are the ones that benefit the most. Banks charge transaction fees from businesses. It's around 3.5% of the whole payment, which means from $100 payment, seller gets around $97.50. Our app would allow to lower that fee using our apps account to little over 1%, which for big businesses meas incredible amount of savings. Consider this, in US alone around 90 billion dollars are paid in transaction fees only.

@FilipeRamalho yeah, but Visa/Mastercard for example charges you 1% for every transaction as a card operator (yes, they can do it legally). Outside of that, banks charge seller for every transaction

@DawidCyron In the US, not in Europe (atleast for the buyer) What system the seller uses is up to them, but I'm aware they make less with credit cards in general so I always use my debit card.

The sad reality is you need to spend millions hoping to become popular enough or no one will use your app and the company will go under.

To me it looks like you don't even know your market and the existing competition.