Fintech Ireland: Why has Trezeo gone done the equity crowdfunding path and why now?
 
Trezeo: Trezeo was founded in Dublin in 2016 to help self-employed workers manage their finances. We’ve since evolved to become the only business account that helps the self-employed look beyond their next pay cheque, empowering them to start planning their financial future.
 
In just two years we’ve won places on accelerator programmes, won industry awards, grew the team, developed and launched iOS and Android apps, and have started piloting our solution with customers. Not bad going for two years work. We have far-reaching ambitions, and the opportunity to change the lives of independent and gig-based workers is too great.
 
We’ve got huge aspirations. Trezeo is on a mission to make it more financially viable and exciting to be self-employed. We think the best place to start doing this is to provide financial services and solutions that reduce the uncertainty of income volatility and help customers save automatically for a rainy day or holiday. From there, we want to provide more of the kinds of services that a traditional employer would, but directly to the self-employed, like a pension, life insurance, sick cover and more.
 
To get to where we need to go, like many startups, we need more money to help us build our team and build our product.
 
The next natural step has been talking to investors. Conversations are going well, and we’ve got some keen angels ready to put their money, and experience, behind us. And the team can’t wait to shout out about what we’re doing and the impact we believe that we can make to the self-employed.

Equity crowdfunding is a great way for us to both receive investment and start to spread the word about what we’re doing. It’s a big decision, but it just makes sense for us. We have an experienced team and trusted advisors on board, so we didn’t see the need to focus on taking only institutional investment just yet. It can be really valuable when we’re a bit later-stage and need support scaling, or expanding into a new market. But for now, we think there is more value for us in reaching people who get and love what we’re doing. The self-employed: freelancers, consultants, solo-entrepreneurs, giggers and their families who understand the financial stresses of being their own boss. Not being able to pay bills during slow periods. Not having funds set aside for when you’re sick or something breaks down.
 
Fintech Ireland: Gents, down to the hard number.  How much are you looking to raise?

Trezeo: We are looking to raise about £500,000, but what’s even more important to us is that we get hundreds, if not thousands, of people backing us. A #TrezeoTribe of investors, if you will.
 
Fintech Ireland: There are a number of equity crowdfunding platforms.  What attracted you to www.seedrs.com? 

Trezeo: Raising investment online is risky, sure, but we are putting ourselves out there publicly because we believe that this transparency aligns well with our beliefs, and that building our community this way makes sense.
 
 There are a few core reasons why we believe Seedrs is the best funding partner for us:

• They are transparent and make investing in startups accessible. These are important qualities for us.
• They were great to work with - approachable, helpful and thorough.
• They align their success with that of both portfolio businesses and their investors.
• It is simple to aggregate larger and smaller investors in a clean, uncomplicated structure.

Fintech Ireland: Thank you Garrett and Flavian.  Best of luck with the fundrasing and will you keep Fintech Ireland updated with your progress?  I am sure that other Irish fintech will be watching with a keen eye or two!

Trezeo: Thanks Fintech Ireland for the coverage and we'll keep you up-to-date with the milestones. 
 
Learn more about Trezeo and get early-access to our Seedrs campaign by registering at trezeo.seedrs.com. And please help us spread the word of our campaign with others via social media and email. 

[Note: this article is a free service and no consideration was exchanged for the purposes of this article.  We simply like to help promote Irish fintech both in Ireland and globally!]

Many thanks to John Power, CEO, Ostia Solutions for permission to carry extracts from his recent blogs.  John is a technical entrepreneur with a track record in the successful creation, growth and sales of technology companies. His vision has led to the Portus technology and inception of Ostia Solutions.  John is also a Member of the Steering Committee at The Irish Centre for Cloud Computing and Commerce (IC4).

Twitter: @ostiasolutions
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​The introduction of Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) brings a lot of change for financial institutions, but what does Open Banking mean for the consumer?

Open Banking as a concept is targeted such that individuals or large and small businesses can benefit from it. Many use the analogy of what the ‘Open Skies’ policy did for air travel in Europe. ‘Open Skies’ opened up air travel to a wider group of people through competition and resulted in a significant reduction in fares. In this blog we try to foresee what ‘Open Banking’ could mean to your average consumer.

Access to Accounts in one Place
The most obvious benefit will be an ability to see all of your financial information in one place. At the moment, taking the simplest example, when you have bank accounts with different banking institutions, you generally need to install and use multiple applications to see your accounts. When extended to credit cards and mortgages, many banks don’t always offer an ability to see these online. Consider that in the future, Open Banking will offer you an opportunity to see your current financial position in a single application on your phone.

Continue reading at https://www.ostiasolutions.com/blog/blog/98-what-does-open-banking-mean-to-consumers

Many banks have been toying with Open Banking for a number of years now as a way to improve the customer experience, however, they are generally trying to do this only for their own customers. As a concept, this is almost diametrically opposed to what Open Banking is supposed to offer, however, now that the EU has provided the stick that is PSD2 (Payment Services Directive 2), the banks must open up their data to authorized individuals. In this blog we will discuss the issues for the banks and how they might eventually deal with them.

Security and Culpability
This is potentially one of the things that keeps most bankers awake at night. The potential is there for someone to compromise their security and thus steal many millions of euro from customer accounts or simply even customer data with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) on the horizon. In the past, only the bank and its own internal applications and some select external partners could access the data. This enabled them to ensure a belt and braces attitude to security and avoid any potential breaches. Most have now moved to include behavioural monitoring to determine if unexpected behaviour is seen on an account. As they open up access to their data, monitoring this will become even harder as determining what is ‘unexpected behaviour’ on an account will be even more difficult as Third Party Providers (TPPs) will find new and unusual ways to use the data to which they have been given access. This is a major challenge for the banks at the moment.

Continue reading at https://www.ostiasolutions.com/blog/blog/99-what-does-open-banking-psd2-mean-to-banks