Latvian business newspaper Dienas Bizness has published a series of articles on FinTech startups. The series also provided opinions on the prospects in this industry from Member of the Board of Rietumu Bank Eugene Dugaev and other specialists. 
Member of the Board of Rietumu Bank Eugene Dugaev According to Eugene Dugaev, “We live in a time when children exchange messages from
emojicons and do their homework together by using Skype. Still, when it comes to money, we still exchange payment orders which take a minimum of half a day to travel between the banks. However, despite the inefficiency, the financial sector still has a lot of money.
As a result, FinTech startups are popping up all over the place: they compete in terms of convenience, simplicity, speed, marketing, price and new business models.
These innovations are not only technical, but also regulatory ones – even the conservative German regulator BaFin does not look critically at banks working with crypto-currencies anymore and allows them to open accounts without meeting a customer in person, but by holding a video interview instead.
We like to support the development of FinTech, because the final result allows the boring part of the bank’s work which nobody likes to think about to be hidden from the end user, while humanising the service.
One example is the Latvian startup Swipe.lv – it allows one to present invoices which can be paid up by a credit card, and the funds can be received the next day on a bank account at any Latvian bank.”
Full texts of articles in Latvian
can be found here. Eleonora Gailisha Mass Media and Public Relations
Phone: +371-67020506
Fax: +371-67020563
E-mail:
egailisha@rietumu.lv
