Please meet Justinas Kaminskas, CEO at Finpass – a financial passport which provides more and greater competitive opportunities for individual to obtain the required funding. Justinas elaborated more about the idea behind his startup and how to compete in fintech market.

So what is Finpass? How does it work?

Before talking about our app, let’s look at our daily finances. We are using debit cards to pay for our casual needs, most of us have a credit card in our wallets in case we need financing on the spot, while other credit products, such as mortgages, leases or consumer loans, enable us to fulfill our dreams today instead of putting them away for a very long time. Credit is becoming an inseparable part of our lives. However, at the same time we have to know how to correctly manage our debts.

Finpass developed an app hat allows you to receive detailed financial information in one place – credit rating, credit history and generalised bank account information. may ask why should he care about this information? That’s a fair question. The truth is that all credit providers check your income information and credit history prior to issuing you a loan. Finpass allows you to see yourself through the eyes of a financial institution and provides insights as to where you should improve with regards to your credit rating. Namely, by making an individual aware of his financial situation, Finpass provides opportunities to better manage one’s finances and gain better access to affordable financing.

Another service that Finpass offers is remote identification. This service allows individual to identify himself to financial institutions, utility companies, or to any other company where he wishes to open an account without going to their office to prove their identity.

Thus, remote identification service coupled with individual’s detailed financial information together form a digital financial passport or Finpass.

What are your competitors and competitive advantages?

Currently, Finpass offers two services to our clients: remote identification service and, as mentioned previously, individual’s comprehensive financial information. Our competitors in the field of remote identification: Jumio, Veriff. Competitors in the field of account information services: Saltedge, Instantor, Kontomatik.

Finpass, unlike competitors, combines functionality and offers universal solution that provides added-value to both end-users and businesses. Finpass offers comprehensive solution to financial institutions: they can remotely on-board their clients and receive their financial information. In this way they can fully automate their internal processes and gain more information about their clients. From individual’s perspective, by using our app he can remotely identify himself to any of our partner companies and learn more about his finances and make an informed decision regarding his finances.

What were the reasons behind coming up with this idea and launching this product?

Short question: have you ever wondered what information credit provider has about you prior to issuing you financing? Majority have not. Our team noted that individuals have little information on how they are assessed by financial institutions and have little control over their data. Our mission is to increase individual’s financial literacy so that he can make informed decisions with regards to his finances. I have no doubt that Finpass will help closing this informational gap between lenders and borrowers.

When exactly did you launch, what were the main challenges before launching?

We launched in December 2017. The main challenge and focus for us was to ensure the security of personal data. Therefore, due to our efforts, Finpass offers safe and completely secure services for both financial institutions and their customers that download the app.

What are your target customers? Both in terms of user profile and geography?

For our remote identification services our target customers are financial institutions that are offering their services online. Other target customers include Telco’s, utility companies, and ICOs, which are currently surging in popularity.  

For our financial information services target customers are financial institutions, Telco’s, utility companies and anybody else, who want to learn more about their customer’s financial situation and capabilities to repay their obligations.

What are main challenges while working on this product and how are you overcoming them?

The main challenge is resource allocation. Due to ever increasing demand for remote identification service from our customers, allocating resources is a tough challenge as talent recruitment is a rather competitive and lengthy process.

How are you funded? Do you seek extra funding?

Currently revenues from sales are sufficient to cover all our costs and fund further product development. Thus, we do not seek extra funding, however, we are actively looking for business partnerships, that would allow us to enter foreign markets.

Please introduce your founders, your core team and your broader team?

Our core team is Me (CEO), Audrius Petraitis (CTO), Dainius Kreivys (Senior Developer). Our partners are Fintegry (helps us with development of Finpass products), Marketing Point (helps us with marketing strategy) and Scorify (helps us with credit scoring). Currently we are also members of Creditinfo Sandbox that allows us to use their business infrastructure.

How has business been so far? Could you share some numbers to illustrate this (users, sales, etc)?

Currently we are steadily gaining new clients and forming new business ventures with our strategic partners. To give you some numbers, as of March 2018, the total number of individuals that have passed through our identification services have exceeded 100 000 (globally).

Future plans, ambitions? Simply speaking – what’s next?

Our mission is to make Finpass an internationally recognized natural / legal person’s financial passport that can be submitted by own choice. To achieve this we first need to fully cover our home market and start expanding abroad. Thus, our first target is Baltic States and Nordic countries will follow next.

Thank you for the answers!