- Revolut founder and CEO Nikolay Storonsky talked about replicating the success of superapps from the east, and competition from traditional banks and tech companies.
- “I think there is less competition compared to the east. Here our competition is only banks, and to be honest they are not that sophisticated.”
- Nikolay Storonsky joined European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer and WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at 100,000-attendee online conference Web Summit.
Revolut founder and CEO Nikolay Storonsky spoke at Web Summit today about regulation and competition from the east, and from western banks.
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“I think there is less competition [in the west] compared to the east. Here, our competition is only banks, and to be honest they are not that sophisticated. A lot of them are over a hundred years old and they simply don’t have enough tech talent. If you look at the east, then, you have WeChat, you have other large players who have already conquered the market. It’s a much more competitive market compared to the west.”
When asked about whether he sees large tech companies as competitors he said:
“Big tech companies have a lot of talent, a lot of resources and capital, plus they have billions of customers who they can cross-sell financial services to. I think the only reason they haven’t entered this market – or they have entered but not with much speed –is because they don’t want to be regulated. So they’re trying to find other ways to avoid regulation. As a result, they’ve chosen a model to partner with the banks. So they build the front-end, sometimes the back-end, but they run the business based on the licences of the banks.”
He has doubts about a model like this posing a threat to Revolut, due to its limitations.
“We tried this model as well when we launched, but this model was not that successful. To really approve any new products for customers, you need to go through a lot of processes set up by banks and, as a result, you can’t really move fast.”
