Two hands with medical gloves handing over a banknote, representing fintech during the corona year of 2020

How 2020 Changed the Fintech Industry – Trends and Developments

Christoph Laurer Leave a comment

What a year… good thing, we have a new one in replacement. 

Last December, when putting together our annual industry recap articles (you can find some of them here if you are in for nostalgia), we could not have guessed that the fintech scene would be on the brink of profound change. Many predictions, fintech and banking experts had made for 2020, did not occur – or did not occur for the reasons that we assumed would provoke them. 

Everything considered, though, the financial industry got off cheaply in 2020, when compared to other industries. Some branches could even step up their game. 

The question now is, if the fintech trends of 2020 will continue in 2021 or if they will “return to form”, once the restrictions in worldwide trade, business and retail loosen again. A look in the rear-view mirror will give us some implications. 

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Bogdan Dinu, Head of Product at Thunes and interview partner in this cross-border payments talk.

Finquiry #2: Bogdan Dinu on Cross-Border Payments

Christoph Laurer Leave a comment

Since the dawn of the Internet age, global economies have grown closer – as did the underlying financial systems. Today, we can digitally purchase a product with materials from Eastern Europe, produced in Singapore, refined and branded for sale in Canada, and eventually shipped to Brazil. All countries involved in this supply chain have to maintain financial relationships and this also necessitates numerous cross-border payments.

However, that’s easier said than done. Complying to all regulations, security processes and technical requirements necessary to move funds from one country to the other comes with high efforts and costs for service providers.

For our fintech interview series “Finquiry”, we have asked cross-border payments expert Bogdan Dinu to break down what goes behind facilitating effective and low-cost transfers.

Our Guest: Bogdan Dinu, Head of Product at Thunes

Our interview partner Bogdan Dinu is the perfect expert to lead us through the dense jungle of the cross-border payments landscape. As the Head of Product in leading global payments network Thunes, he is set to support the business through its next phase of global expansion. 

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A home office workplace, representing remote work in the software development business

Enabling Remote Working at Software Companies: Best Practices

Christoph Laurer Leave a comment

The COVID-19 pandemic shook our economy as well as our society to its core. Thus one of the biggest shifts it brought happened at the intersection of those two: The workplace. Due to lockdowns and reduced mobility, companies big and small were forced to adjust work policies, embracing a remote work approach. They allow their employees to work from home and telecommute with their colleagues.

Among them are many software and digital service companies that initially never thought they could do away with their coder lounges or office cubes. But remote work has become a mass phenomenon: A study by Gartner forecasts that 51% of the knowledge workers worldwide will have access to remote working space at the end of 2021. 

So, you will have to include remote working into your business routines in the future. And if you did already, are you getting the maximum out of it? We have compiled our company’s best practices to help you pull off the home office challenge.

This article will:

Let’s get down to basics!

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A computer mouse resting on a bundle of euro banknotes, representing electronic money or e-money, respectively

What Is E-Money – Definitions, Processes, Challenges

Christoph Laurer Leave a comment

E-money, short for Electronic Money, is the electronic alternative to cash. Since it started as a concept in the 1980s and rose to prominence during the Dot-Com era, it has acted as one of the biggest game-changers in the financial industry. In a matter of only four years, from 2014 to 2018, the number of electronic money transactions in Europe alone doubled to more than 4 billion. 

This aspiring form of money deserves our attention. To provide a starting point, this article will give an overview of: 

  • The definition of e-money as a whole
  • The subtle distinctions in its applications
  • The process of electronic payment with e-money
  • The potential downsides of e-money
  • And finally, e-money licencing and who should apply for such a license  

Let’s start!

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An illustration of an hourglass with coins in it, representing the traditional financial system and its history

The History of the Financial System

Natallia Martchouk Leave a comment

Introduction

trimplement co-founder Natallia Martchouk looks into the history of centralized finance.

We all are used to living in the world of centralized banks and institutions that govern finance – also known as the old economy in the crypto and fintech scene. In fact, many people cannot imagine that the financial system could work differently. They simply take this existing system as the given and best option. 

But is this the case? Or are there good reasons why there is a need for new paradigms like the growing new area of decentralized finance? Let’s talk about some historical milestones in the development of the financial systems of the old economy, before examining its disadvantages.

The Old Economy: History, Status Quo and Risks

Money Makes the World Go Round

Let’s start at the very beginning and go through some basic concepts. The financial story of humankind starts with the invention of money.

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A wallet, money and a computer cooling system, symbolizing the rapid real-time payments of SCT Inst

From SCT Inst to EPI – How European Banking Is Changing

Matthias Gall Leave a comment
Matthias Gall, co-founder of trimplement
trimplement co-founder Matthias Gall traces the origin of the SCT Inst scheme and gives an outlook.

Having followed the European financial press in recent years, chances are you stumbled across the term SCT Inst. This seven letter abbreviation hints at an ambitious banking project that has sharpened the competitive edge of the European financial market: Instant, multi-national payments. 

The SCT Inst scheme was introduced to enable rapid, real-time payments between banks and financial institutions located in different European countries. As such, SCT Inst acts as a stepping stone for more banking projects bound to happen further down the timeline (like the European Payment Initiative or EPI). 

As you are reading this, SCT Inst has already taken hold in banking. But still, banks can feel the challenges it has presented to them. 

Let’s see what we are dealing with.

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Two businessmen lining out a payment gateway for their online marketplace and other platforms of the platform economy.

Empowering the Platform Economy

Christoph Laurer Leave a comment
aye4fin Managing Partner Thomas Tittelbach, presenting 5 important topics when creating payment gateways on a business level.
Thomas Tittelbach, Managing Partner at aye4fin gives you a detailed overview of how to approach building a payment gateway from a business perspective.

E-commerce is a growing market – but it’s not taking place entirely within single online shops. By far not. Online marketplace environments have cemented their presence all over the web, be they specialized in dealing with certain types of goods or all-in-one digital warehouses. In addition to retail, service platforms and even comparison portals have found their niches as well. In short: We live in the age of the platform economy – driven by smooth-flowing online payment solutions.

Yet sometimes the last part is more wishful thinking than reality. Payment processing requires a payment gateway designed for the specific transaction flows, which occur in marketplaces. And if you want to design such a well-functioning solution yourself, you can turn it into a business case on its own.

Of course, there are things to keep in mind, from a business perspective. In this second part of our Article Series on Payment Gateway Building, we give you an overview of those. Here are five topics to consider when building payment gateways for marketplace platforms.

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The trimplement co-founders Thijs Reus, Natallia Martchouk und Matthias Gall sitting together and discussing the foundation of their software company trimplement

How to Found a Software Company

Christoph Laurer Leave a comment

Enclosed you will not find the 6 definite steps, instructing you how to found a successful software company.

Bummer, right?

But don’t stop reading, yet. We just wanted to get this out of the way, right at the start.

There are mandatory steps to take when founding and co-founding software companies – like registering the company in the first place. But there is no such thing as a secret recipe for entrepreneurial success on the software development market.

Which does not mean you could not cook up a healthy and successful software business if you gather some specific ingredients. In this article, we will share some entrepreneurial best practices with you. We will give you an overview of what steps we took and what lessons we learned when establishing the trimplement software development company in Germany. (And what better occasion than our 10th anniversary to roll out such a menu?)

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A key on a keyboard with the infura symbol on it, representing the smart contract tutorial by trimplement co-founder Natallia Martchouk about migrating a parity-based smart contract into an infura-based one

Coding Smart Contracts -Tutorial Part III

Natallia Martchouk Leave a comment

Why Infura

Photo of Natallia Martchouk, co-founder of trimplement
Natallia Martchouk, co-founder of trimplement, explains how to develop Ethereum smart contracts.

Last year I published a tutorial helping you get started with the development of smart contracts and using them from java applications. In those tutorials, I’ve described how to use parity as the Ethereum client. Exactly this setup we’ve used also in our own project “Value Manifesto”. But a couple of weeks ago we’ve decided to switch the Ethereum client from parity to Infura. This gives me an opportunity to extend my tutorial with new information.

One of the reasons for changing the Ethereum client is as follows: maintaining your own Ethereum node can give you headaches. First of all, you need to keep your parity version up to date as it’s being continuously improved and adapted to the changes happening on the Ethereum blockchain. 

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A point-of-sale for credit cards symbolizing the developments in the digital payment industry of 2019

2019: The Year in Payments

Matthias Gall Leave a comment
Matthias Gall, co-founder of trimplement
Matthias Gall looks back on the developments in payments of 2019

When I sat down to write my article on innovation in fintech and payments last year, I was a little disappointed about what I saw in Europe, as you can probably tell from the article. I decided to look somewhere else instead and found more innovation on the African continent.

This year, though, things are looking a bit different: pressure to innovate keeps rising in Europe. When it comes to payments in Europe, there might be light at the end of the tunnel.

Let’s start with one theme that manifested itself throughout the last couple of years.

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