Swish the Swedish FinTech That Blew Me Away in 2017
FinTech is a very interesting sector. What people are trying to do in the FinTech industry is, work around banks.
They find new ways to make it easier for payments, to make it simpler to get a loan. They basically often try to cut out the middleman, the bank.
Swish is one of them, well almost. You will see.
Meet Swish
Swish is a Swedish mobile payment app. I came in contact with it on my last trip to Sweden and I was very impressed.
What you do with Swish is, you have an app, the Swish app. That app is linked to your bank account and that works with almost or all Swedish banks.
All you need to do is register your phone number in the app. Then go to the bank and have your number associated with your swish account.
After that is done, you can use the app to make payments or send your daughter her pocket money.
How the app works is quite simple. You have three fields in the app:
- One where you can put in a phone number in.
- A second one where you enter the amount you want to transmit.
- And one where you can send a message with your transaction.
Of course, then you have a send button. When you press the send button you need to enter your PIN code, that you got from the bank, and then the money is transmitted to the other guy.
It’s that simple and quick.
Paying Your Parking Ticket
It’s amazing how simple this is. We went to an ice hockey game and as we drove on the parking lot there was a guy standing.
He collects the money for the parking ticket. Now, in Germany what you needed need to do is you get out of your purse and pay him in hard cash. In some other countries you would take out your purse and you pay him with your credit card.
In Sweden what you do is, on that guy’s chest is a note with his phone number. You just open the app, put in his phone number and put in the amount and press send (and enter your pin).
That’s it, the transaction is done. You show him the scren that you have paid the transaction and then you drive off and park your car.
Plot Twist: Swish Is Not A Pure FinTech!
Remember in the beginning when I told you that FinTechs try to work around banks. Basically steal business from banks.
The clever thing is that the swedish banks actually created Swish, so a FinTech can’t come up with it and mess up their business.
Clever, right!?
It makes it very easy to do payments and because it is backed up by the banks it owns the trust of the users.
That is why the current market penetration of Swish is crazy high. I think it’s about 80% of all Swedes are using Swish now.
Pay Almost Everywhere
You can use Swish almost everywhere. In bars, in shops, everywhere.
It is a very very easy way to transmit money and a very practical way to transmit money. That’s why everybody is using it.
It blows my mind that countries like Germany don’t do that. How is it possible that I still need to go and get cash from the bank or need to use my credit card.
Its 2018 guys! But, I feel like I am in the stone age.
I know, Iknow, there are other ways like Apple pay or Google pay.
But who is using that? Nobody!
In Germany can’t pay with Apple or Google anywhere. And that is the whole problem.
Please Deutsche Bank, Sparkasse, Raiffeisenbank, Postbank, whoever:
Get Your Ass Into Gear!!!
.
.
Say Hello On: Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Snapchat
Don’t miss my Data Science and Big Data Podcast on SoundCloud
Subscribe to my newsletter: Here
