BANCIBO
A Collaborative Approach to Payment Services

As music evolves, so do musicians. While some musicians change their style to keep up with the cultural advances, others morph after being inspired by their peers. Jiri Kubelka, the founder of a card and payment service providing company BANCIBO, prefers to narrate his company’s journey along the same lines. Over the last decade, surfing the ebb and flow of the financial services industry, BANCIBO has constantly evolved according to emerging market opportunities. Despite starting out as a small closed-loop card issuer in the Czech Republic in 2012, the company has worked its way up to offer regional payment services, payment gateways via Mastercard and Visa cards, mobile applications, multicurrency current accounts, and several other digital payment services.

A part of this evolution can be credited to BANCIBO’s ability to turn industry challenges into new opportunities. For example, the deregulation of cards and payment services has been favourable for BANCIBO to become an e-money issuer and payment provider without a full bank license—both locally and internationally. Aligned with the new digital world, BANCIBO works closely with its business partners to develop products and services that fit the needs of the new breed of tech-savvy consumers. “Customers expect most of the services to go ‘digital,’ whereby they can access real-time and paperless payments embedded with privacy and cybersecurity that allows electronic identification of individuals and helps in real-time AML. We are prepared for the ‘digital world’, in co-operation with our business partners,” informs Kubelka.

While it is challenging to develop solutions and services that are fast, secure and affordable at the same time, BANCIBO meticulously analyses various factors to determine if a product needs to be developed, purchased or outsourced from other vendors. BANCIBO has worked in concert with various organisations to capitalise on the opportunities and attain the stature it holds today. To that end, BANCIBO has recently partnered with a CEE fintech company that was looking to include payment services to its invoicing solution. In order to make its payment services highly secure, BANCIBO also works in partnership with a global solution provider that covers ID documents of over 180 countries. BANCIBO has collaborated with this solution provider to implement a mobile application that verifies customer based on biometrics (picture of face and scan of ID document), and makes all mandated checks before approving the customers to start using the services. Apart from these beneficial partnerships, BANCIBO’s proficiency emanates from its dynamic and skilful team that holds rich experience in the financial services industry. “Success is based only on open-minded people working hard and thinking wisely. We believe people are the key who drive the success of a company,” he adds.

At the forefront of the financial technology industry, BANCIBO acts as both a musician and a conductor. “While on the one hand, we are musicians, we are also conductors and composers,” says Kubelka. “Just like conductors at concerts, who assemble various musicians, and train/tune them, we have succeeded by collaborating with other small and big companies to incorporate their products and services into our puzzle.” Also, the way composers write a song, BANCIBO has composed and weaved its services in accordance with consumers’ requirements.

As a global payment service provider, BANCIBO offers prepaid close-loop cards as gift or meal voucher cards. The company has emerged as one of the first legal entity to receive a separate license from the Czech National Bank to authorise its prepaid closed-loop meal voucher titled GastroCard. Launched in 2016, GastroCard writes one of BANCIBO’s biggest success stories, streamlining the way businesses allot meal vouchers to their employees. It also comes with an assurance of tax advantages, safety, and ease-of-use.

In days to come, BANCIBO is prepared to launch the Mastercard debit card and bank account package for the international customer based in the E.U. “In early 2020, we expect to receive an extension of our EMI license from the central bank and obtain the new Mastercard license so that we can offer payment services fully based on our own licenses, using both in-house and outsourced services,” concludes Kubelka.