For as long as I can remember, I have been thinking about running my own company. I’ve always been attracted to building and creating things. When I was a child, my dream was to become an architect. I started my career on the Budapest Stock Exchange (BSE) in the mid 1990s, so I was one of the first few to see and experience open outcry trading on the BSE. The stock exchange is an exciting world, but somehow I felt that there was not much I could build there, so I quickly started my own company. I turned to the startup world in the 2010s. We started more projects and generally speaking, the projects were more and more successful. There was a skill-game based website and an advertising app using the lock screen of mobile phones. It might sound like a cliché, but it’s from these failed or less successful attempts that you learn the most, and they are the path to your first success. Experiencing these kinds of failures is for the best when it comes to entrepreneurship.

RECASH was founded in 2015 with my twin brother, Péter Zádor. Our first product was a lockscreen-based advertising app. However, when the European Union’s PSD2 directive came out, it was immediately clear that something special could be brought to the table, so we changed direction.

The aim of this regulation is to liberate bank account data, hitherto unavailable to third parties, available to authorised companies in a highly regulated and secure environment, in order to evolve new financial innovations. The directive creates new type of payment institutions such as AISP (Account Information Service Provider) and PISP (Payment Initiation Service Provider) companies.

It did not take too long to put the groundwork together. I knew, I felt, I believed that PSD2 would be the next big thing after blockchain in the field of financial technology, and that the early adopters could make it big. Our idea was an automated cashback-based marketing tool leveraging banking transactional data that was not accessible before. We also knew that this data could be very valuable and we could certainly go further on the data provider line. We were also able to quickly make our investors understand the potential of Open Banking. And although many players initially expected banks to be hostile towards Open Banking, actually all banks see that it’s in their best interest to support the new standard.

Despite PSD2 entering into force (Second Payment Services Directive of the European Union) on 15 September 2019, banks across Europe were late in developing the adequate APIs, interfaces and backends, which caused us approximately 2 years of delay. As a venture capital backed startup, this was a very difficult period for us. Stakeholders are not happy to see their money burning and their portfolio company sliding off track. But we kept moving forward, improving other parts of the system. When Tokeportal came along we immediately saw the potential in crowdfunding as an alternative to venture capital. And fintechs – such as Revolut, Chip, or Mintos – almost always carry out crowdfunding rounds successfully.

RECASH is one of the first in Europe to make use of bank data. This type of data was not available to market players until now. I don’t think I need to stress the potential of this. We are building further useful functions for both our users and our partners. What our users see is a very easy to use cashback application and this remains the trailblazer for expansion and communication, but it is much more than that: it is a unique marketing tool and datamine.

Our vision is to become the dominant European player in the field of banking data, especially in the retail sector.

We see a competitive advantage of around 1.5 years over the current entrants: in addition to the roughly one-year central bank approval process, our experience in the PSD2 banking API space is a significant advantage. There is nothing new under the sun: the right strategy is rapid expansion. We have built a company that can scale quickly with controlled processes and a solid IT background. We have started preparing for expansion in the Czech, Slovak and Danish markets. From the beginning of 2023, we want to launch in a new country every 2-4 months, and we are currently laying the foundations for this.

Our staff are highly qualified professionals. We currently have 12 people working at the company, about half of whom are developers. Our Chief Technology Officer has about 20 years of experience, and also our native app developers have long been in the business.

We need to prepare the company for Series A funding in the coming months. Everything is in place for this, our numbers are very good. Our crowdfunding campaign aims to raise the necessary funds until the Series A round. We believe that RECASH can be an outstanding investment and that it’s one of the first opportunities to invest in a PSD2 company.

Our campaign started as the most successful crowdfunding on Tokeportal so far, and a few days ago we crossed the 100% mark (EUR210k). However, we are not stopping just yet: the goal is 150% (EUR320k) so there is still room for investment.

We have received the vote of confidence from a wide range of private investors, in addition to several venture capitalists, which will be of significant value for further fundraising rounds. Our soon-to-be crowd investors also include a good number of our existing users. The crowdfunding investment is primarily used for marketing purposes, with the aim of rapidly increasing the number of our users. The next round of investment will also support a significant acceleration of international expansion. Fortunately, we are already negotiating with like-minded investors who see it as a priority to gain as much traction in Europe as possible through an aggressive expansion strategy. We hope to publish the next good news at the end of the year! 😀