A message from ZELF founder and CEO Elliot Goykhman
Zelfers, first of all, I want to thank each and every one of you — we got this far due to your support and your early and massive sign-ups.
I have to admit our sailing in the last two months was not exactly a smooth one. The year 2020 surprised all of us and it’s just getting “curiouser and curiouser”, but I feel that some explanation is due as we strive to be as transparent as possible with our clients and partners.
ZELF relies on partners to provide the necessary connectivity to the global financial infrastructure. We finished our integration and testing way ahead of our pre-launch in April and we have started to issue cards in June as promised.
We did not realize that the big corporations we rely on are even more vulnerable to force-majeures and effects of COVID than we are. Key employees sick, corporate offices quarantined, certification closed. As promises and delays of our cards being live in Apple Pay and Google Pay started to pile up, we paused issuing cards in order not to disappoint our valuable early adopters by giving a limited product usable only online.
Multibillion dollar bankruptcy of Wirecard further added to the amount of financial scrutiny neobanks need to undergo to operate, and we are going thru all of this with flying colors.
The great news is that we have used this forced “downtime” to deliver more features to you, Zelfers!
1. We added functionality of topping up your account instantly from another card.
2. We integrated buttons in WhatsApp interface previously unseen anywhere (more on that in the next post) — possibly world’s first!
…and drum roll!
3. We ran successful tests of Apple Pay and Google Pay in McDonalds, woo-hoo!
(Check my video in our TikTok)
Your support fuels our enthusiasm and we are pushing our partners to work as hard as they can to deliver more cards to more countries.
At this time contactless payments are available in France, but we will not rest until we issue cards to our valuable Spanish customers, as promised. With the contactless in place we will restart the cards issuance.
Stay safe, stay positive, and thank you, Zelfers!
