1. Tell us a bit about yourself and your company.
I’m Dmitry Tsymber, a Co-Founder of Dyninno Group and a founder of the group’s latest venture in the neo-banking space – MultiPass. I can describe myself as a seasoned CEO with 25 years of experience in retail banking and consumer finance. My expertise and interests lie in FinTech and international business scale-up.
2. Give us the backstory – how did you get the founding idea, and how did the first sale come about?
Since the start of my career, I’ve been in banking and financial services – I have managed operations globally and led different companies through exponential growth and restructuring. In 2015 I became a co-founder of Dyninno Group by launching one of its three main divisions – FinTech.
MultiPass is the latest addition to Dyninno FinTech; it was originally created as a shared payment solution for all Dyninno businesses and in just a few years, after having secured in-house services, it became attractive to the group’s partners worldwide. So basically, our first sale happened organically through our closest contacts.
Reacting to customer demand, we have evolved into a market-fit product that now helps companies from more than 50 markets to speed up their payment processes.
Simply said, MultiPass became an Authorised EMI that now helps companies to manage their bank transfers in foreign markets seamlessly. We take the stress and hassle off the shoulders of various companies globally, and we do this by using scalable proprietary technology with a branch-like client experience based on our group’s contact centre infrastructure.
3. What were the biggest challenges in starting?
The biggest challenges were connected with gaining clients’ trust when competing with traditional banks. However, banks have issues with speed, flexibility and discriminatory pricing to our target segments. This is where we can complete. As a person who comes from the banking industry, I know the underlying processes and how things are done at big banks “from the inside”. So we need to work extra hard to win the trust via better functionality, better service, and better pricing.
Good news, there is a real need from our clients that we can resolve. Far too often international trade is considered by the banks as complicated, especially when it comes to mid-sized clients. Hence, there are many restrictions and hurtles. Add to this low responsiveness to client requests and hidden fees, like bad currency exchange rates, and you can feel the pain the majority of our clients feel when dealing with traditional banks. Learning from Dyninno Group, we figured out the way to build must-needed trust with our potential clients. We invested in scalable payment, risk management and customer service systems, and real-life personal support. We combine what new technologies and regulations can offer – a fully distant and digitalized onboarding, multi-channel communication, and open banking solutions with a branch-like experience at the place it is most needed. Since a dedicated account manager who knows the company and its business gets assigned, the client can find the most efficient and secure solution.
When we started, we were simply servicing the company’s needs since it was operating globally. Then we realised that there is a demand from companies that operate like us because the regular service is restrictive and so-to-say stubborn. That’s why we say that it’s empowered by technology and delivered by people.
4. What areas within FinTech do you personally find most interesting and why?
Neo-banking – due to its technology usage and ability to provide more efficient international payments. Since technologies are evolving, the norms of traditional banking are changing, so we are now seeing a significant shift in how payments are initiated and processed. And disruption happens in many sub-sections in payments, starting with P2P payments and finishing with global remittance platforms. It is also clear that technological improvements have affected consumers and the B2B environment, which I find very exciting. And I think there is a lot of future potential there. Back when I was working for banks, some changes were starting to take place, and I see them being realised only now – 20 years later. This is way too rigid, slow, and inefficient.
5. Which are the key trends and opportunities in (European) financial services?
What we can see now is that Embedded Finance has moved onto the stage of implementation across several industries and I expect the wider industry to embrace it both in the corporate as well as consumer sectors. This will result in frictionless transactional flow and increase efficiency and product/service satisfaction across the sectors. My personal favourite example is Amazon Fresh shops in London, where I can scan my App upon entering the shop and leave all the billing and charging to the automated systems.
6. What’s on your bookshelf/reading list?
I have three at the moment – all three books help you survive in Fintech, which is dynamic and fast-changing. Whatever is today doesn’t mean it will be there tomorrow, and these books shine a light on helping you focus on the most important things.
Zero to One by Peter Thiel & Blake Masters and Good to Great by Jim Collins are my reading Bibles. As you read these books, you understand that making things great takes a journey of a thousand septs. People are usually looking for quick and easy things, like a “silver bullet” that will win it all – like “how to get rich in one month”. It doesn’t work like that, and people are usually discouraged by that attitude. It’s all about repeating and improving.
Another one that sits on my table is Getting Things Done by David Allen, which focuses on the art of stress-free productivity. So this is more of an operational book.
7. What tip would you like to give FinTech entrepreneurs?
I have three pieces of advice:
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