👨💻 Anyone can launch a Neobank now. Here’s the fundamental 3-step playbook: 1️⃣ Wallet infra Start with an out-of-the box non-custodial wallet — Privy, Turnkey, Portal — as the foundation. Security and user trust from day one. 2️⃣ Payment rails & compliance ⚡ Stablecoin ↔ Fiat rails — plug in Bridge, Due, OpenPayd for global on/off-ramps (+ consider decentralised p2p in underserved markets e.g. Anzo Labs) 💳 Cards / Pmts — issue cards via Gnosis Pay, Striga, Kulipa; add local pmt options where needed (e.g. UPI, Pix) 👤 KYC — integrate Onfido, Sumsub, Trulioo to stay compliant 3️⃣ Sleek UX layer Build a Revolut-style experience with Lovable, Flutter Dev, React Native. MVP in days instead of months (a lot of refactoring after tho). Core flows to nail: 💳 Virtual accounts (USD, EUR, ...) — stable, globally accepted ccys 🪪 Card issuance (Visa/Mastercard) — simplest way to spend anywhere 💸 Local & intnl payments — p2p, cross-border, QR pmts 💰 Savings — connect Morpho to enable native yield on stables 🔄 Real-time FX — cut intermediaries, minimise fees 📋 Transaction history — simple money movement tracker This set up beats any local bank. From here — it’s just distribution. There are still huge underbanked regions, and it’s great to see many teams tackling this — I’ve already counted 20+ working on similar products. P.S. This is a huge simplification obv, but it shows how much easier it has become to build a banking app today.
How do you answer on Regulation? Compliance? Trust? Financial, operation risks? Tech maintenance? Arent most neobank partners with an actual bank?
Solid breakdown 👌 but I feel like the biggest challenge now isn’t infra anymore but actually getting users to trust and switch. The tech is becoming more of a ‘plug-and-play’, but winning on distribution and local pain points is still the hard part. Curious how you see teams cracking that?
Love this. Cool how the same stack can now work at an individual level, rolling your own bank with stables, cards, yield, and fiat rails all stitched together. Not for everyone but it feels like the closest we’ve been to personal banking stacks that rival tradfi.
Crossmint has most of these (+ onramping and yield): https://fintech-starter-app.demos-crossmint.com/ Missing Rain for cards and Kiln for savings engine 😉
Great breakdown, Leonid. What strikes me is how much this mirrors Web3 — infra is becoming plug-and-play, but the real bottlenecks are UX and compliance. We see this with clients all the time: tech is ready, adoption isn’t. Do you think Web3 infra is catching up fast enough to meet fintech standards?
1️⃣ Don’t
Leonid Bashlykov and Monite to add Invoicing & Bill Pay (if we're talking a B2B neobank)!
You’re missing Dynamic as an embedded wallet provider.
This is THE best post on fintech I've ever read! It does "omit" — intentionally, I guess — such important elements as UX, and local partnerships, but overall Leonid Bashlykov nailed it there. Kudos! We used that approach to build M®. For reasons mentioned at the end of this post. And also "to do what Revolut cannot do or doesn't do well"... 😎 (How many people at Revolut, let alone customers, can tell the difference between Move, Exchange and Converter on that screenshot... 😈) One of the question we are pondering on now: shall we use Revolut or Wise for local payouts?.. In some countries, Revolut seems to have better local partners and offers faster service. 🤔
Moving Global Markets + Payment Rails Onchain | GTM + Strategy + Content | Follow to learn. DM to partner | I write about tokenization adoption & help tokenization projects avoid pitfalls
2moTrue. But reg licensing would be a massive hurdle. The more unbanked a region, the less established the reg institution and more opaque process.