Banking and banking-as-a-service (BaaS) have been mainly concentrated in the FinTech and financial services domain, but that is gradually changing as non-financial services platforms take the plunge into financial services for the first time. Apple and Goldman Sachs announced the launch of a buy now, pay later (BNPL) service through Apple Pay called Apple Pay Later, an example of how companies are looking to offer direct financial services to their consumers. For art networking site Talenthouse, it has meant coming up with a banking solution tailored to the needs of the millions in its global creative community, a population that is hugely underserved when it comes to financial services and getting paid for their work. It’s the reason why the talent crowdsourcing startup recently partnered with Poland-based software company Vodeno — and its Belgium-based European digital bank Aion Bank — to bring embedded banking services to the millions of creatives on Talenthouse’s platform.
Talenthouse has 14 million members and 3.5 million creatives across its diverse network and what they are actively doing is creating a financial services platform that essentially is going to allow their creatives to speed up payments and access better financial services. Although it may seem on the surface that these regulations are causing more layers of friction, for a company like ours, which is built on banking as a service. The license Vodeno has through Aion Bank has also allowed the fully cloud native ‘360’ platform to easily expand into different geographies and jurisdictions. There’s been a huge wave of new FinTechs and neobanks emerging across Europe, and while some have been highly successful, others have had to shut down operations.