FinTech Podcast #294
Switzerland. Blue sky, high mountains and a German who somehow doesn’t want to be German. Special case. Expensive. Headstrong. Clichés that we Germans like to cultivate towards our southern Alpine neighbours. But as so often happens, the clichés are one thing. They quickly rattle on to the granite hard ground of reality, if one dares to take a closer look. When it comes to digitization, one can say that Switzerland is way ahead of us Germans.
On every mountain, and be it one of the many postcards of four-thousand-metre peaks, you will be able to provide your mother-in-law with a postcard selfie in the finest LTE quality. The same will not be possible for a German neighbour a few metres behind the Berlin border. Radio dead zone. Annoying.
And once it gets to the German unpopular child that is mobile payment, it becomes tricky in Germany. Do we see mobile payment purely as an act of debit card issuance, usually even contactless, are we talking about Apple or Samsung Pay or even a completely different solution?
Switzerland can come up with a uniform response. TWINT – the bumper sticker is on every corner here. Whether supermarket, petrol station or one of the 600 farm shops. Everywhere it is possible to pay with TWINT.
And the Swiss use it. Uniformly. And across all demographic boundaries. Switzerland and TWINT are jointly pursuing a path of cashless payment. Or so it seems. If you look at the list of shareholders of the Zurich Fintech, you will find just about every well-known Swiss bank represented. What happened? In the motherland of the money economy, the big money houses have afforded themselves a luxury. They have cooperated and dispensed with silo solutions. Typically Swiss! You could say that. But what comes next?
8 million inhabitants, a limited market, where do you want to go? Swiss serenity here too. Not all use cases have been depicted yet and what interests the Swiss people, what is going on beyond their many borders – business is going on. Whether someone from neighbouring countries is looking there or not. A small tear of envy runs down the car – unfortunately he has no access to a Swiss Simcard and thus to the local mobile payment solution. So 1,50 fee per debitcard contactless payment cough up or even worse – use cash. Crap.
In today’s podcast Maximilian Small with the CEO, Markus Kilb and the CTO Jens Plath about the area-wide success solution of our neighbours and gives some interesting insights into what it is like to be a Berliner currently paying in Switzerland
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