Bottom Line: Lanistar’s new payment card provides an innovative solution to the paradox holding FinTech back from growing faster, which are the conflicting needs of providing tighter transaction security while giving customers more freedom to customize services.
Fintech startups bring much-needed innovation to the Financial Services industry by concentrating on the two main problems holding back growth. These include improving transaction security to the card level while giving greater personalization options to customers. Many Financial Services IT architectures were designed decades ago, assuming all transactions, customer needs and security settings would be the same – and rarely change. Today customers want the exact opposite. They want the flexibility to define security to their needs and customize how they use every financial service, starting with their debit cards.
Lanistar’s Persona-Driven Approach To Innovation
Lanistar’s core development mission is to provide first-time Generation Z and millennial bank card customers with the freedom and security they want in a bankcard but couldn’t find with any Financial Services Provider. Interested in gaining more customers in these two segments, MasterCard entered into a partnership with Lanistar earlier this year. Lanistar cardholders can use their cards anywhere in the world MasterCard is accepted.
Gurhan Kiziloz’s vision is to provide a bank card that can adapt to the needs of the most tech-savvy, innovative and under-served segment of the financial services market mind. Accenture calls this customer segment the Pioneers and they comprise 23% of the financial services market. 87% say their smartphone is their principal device for transacting online and 43% are in a high-income bracket. The following persona profile is from the recent Accenture Global Financial Services Consumer Study, Discover The Patterns In Personality Report.
Personalization (95%), confident user of technology (89%) and alert about data privacy (and cybersecurity)(87%) are the three most essential criteria members of the Pioneer persona care most about when it comes to selecting a new financial service. Increasing the urgency of providing a more secure bankcard platform for Pioneers and all personas is how fast bankcard fraud is increasing. By 2023, bank card fraud is projected to reach $35.6B, according to the Nilson Report, a market research firm specializing in the financial services industry. By 2027, card fraud transactions are forecast to reach $40B globally.
Gurhan Kiziloz says the development teams are challenging themselves to create the world’s most secure bank card. They’ve evaluated a series of AI-powered end-to-end identity verification technologies that rely on advanced analytics and have selected Jumio as their provider in this area of their product strategy. Jumio has an excellent reputation for combining AI, computer vision and machine learning to protect financial services firms. Jumio’s announcement of a partnership to provide AI-powered end-to-end identity verification reflects Lanistar’s commitment to transaction, customer and infrastructure cybersecurity.
How Lanistar’s Bankcard Works
Lanistar’s announcement of the world’s first polymorphic payment card with a keypad and display allowing users to generate one-time PINs and CVV2 codes that expire after one use is noteworthy for how it solves the financial services industry’s most significant challenges to growth. Lanistar cardholders can customize security to the transaction level in seconds and add up to eight bank cards on their Lanistar card and freeze and unfreeze it in a second either via the app or on the card. The cards will also have limited personal details on the card itself to protect users.
Cardholders can pay with and convert multiple currencies, including Euros, Danish Krone, Bulgarian Lev, Norwegian Krone, Polish Zloty, Hungarian Forint and more. Users can monitor activity across all payment methods within the app, including Lanistar, change the payment card used up to seven days after payment was made, set financial goals and round up and split payments. Users will be able to sign up for three types of account: Chrome (free), Chrome X (£3.99/month early bird)(£5.99/month), Chrome Volt (£14.99/month early bird) (£19.99/month), each with varying benefits. Lanistar is now accepting user registrations ahead of its product launch in January 2021 on its website. Gurhan Kiziloz, CEO and founder at Lanistar, said, “We’ve been planning for this day for over a year now, so I’m thrilled to be releasing Lanistar to the world to change the fintech landscape and give consumers a secure and superior customer experience. This is the first step in our goal to reach a one-billion-pound valuation and break records in our space and we look forward to growing our user base ahead of our card launch in early 2021.” Lanistar’s new card is shown below:
Conclusion
The news comes after a significant year of growth for Lanistar. The startup has successfully launched its influencer marketing program, with approximately 3,000 influencers briefed on the latest developments and over 49,000 followers on Instagram. Lanistar has more than 400 staff across its offices in London (HQ), Skopje, Macedonia and Athens. Its Athens office opened in October 2020 and will act as the company’s compliance hub.
Lanistar reflects the future of fintech as its core business model centers on providing customers more freedom from transaction fraud and fraud prevention while delivering more intuitive user experiences than has ever been possible with a bank card before. Thwarting fraud and securing user identities, data and funds are the cornerstones of building trust with customers – gap traditional banks continue to struggle and fill. Lanistar shows the potential to bridge the gap and transform banking with advanced cybersecurity technologies and a unique polymorphic technology-based approach to card design. The following is Gurhan Kiziloz and the company’s new office in Athens.
