The Story of Neat Hk Developing in Hong Kong to Help the Banking Market with David Rosa and Igor Wos

Topics Covered in this Episode

• Introduce David Rosa and Igor Wos, co-founders of Neat

  Thanks so much for coming on the podcast! We met many years back – I remember you stopping by the GFA office in TST and talking about the developments of Neat – so happy it has come to life – and especially happy you made a business product (as that was my biggest request/ requirement when we talked!)

• How did Neat start?

  Many are curious about it – where did it come up and what is the story. I know some other founders joined forces from other startups they were working on in the FinTech space.

• How Does Neat Work? Is It A Bank?

  So many of our GFA Corporate service clients ask us, as well as blog reader and listeners of this show ask – what is the deal – is Neat a bank or not?

• It Connects to Stripe and Paypal - so who cares if it is a bank or not!

  But what I tell people is – it connects your Paypal HK and Stripe HK accounts – so that is all you need. If you get an offshore bank (outside of HK) then your big problem is you can’t connect to Paypal and Stripe (or other merchant accounts) so this is the perfect solution.

• Limitations and How Users can Deal with them

  But there are limitations – which is frustrating. Not to you as a FinTech startup – but the market as a whole – I have some ideas on how to fix those limitations (I’ll talk about later) – but how are you guys dealing with all these restrictions and barriers? So far you have “come through” and I’m so happy you are growing and out on the market.

• Sending Money out of Hong kong

  One of the bigger limitations is not being able to outbound wire from Neat. But there is some solutions – like many of our GFA corporate clients are using cross border payment solutions such as Aurelia Pay (our friend and sponsor) to then get money to other countries.

• Multi-Currency

  Another one – people want to hold USD. Stripe has the same limitation it seems in HK – and one of the biggest requests I am sure you get is to hold multi-currency – or at least USD. I’m curious what the status is on that. Braintree, Stripe, offer it now – but it is a bit more expensive.

• Questions from our Members

  We have some GFAVIP members on the call today – let’s see if any of them have questions to add

• What is the future of Neat.HK

  You’re doing a great job so far, application processing has sped up I have noticed – and I’m curious what your rollout is (if you can disclose)

• What is the future of banking in Hong Kong?

  And the real big question is – listeners of the show and blog know I hate HK banking nightmare right now – it seriously lost many nights of sleep for me – is it going to get better? Well, I guess these restrictions are a good thing for your business, as you are one of the only options now!

People / Companies / Resources Mentioned in this Episode

Episode Length 41:35

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