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START UP OF THE MONTH Reimagining payments
Fabian Flatz tells IBS Journal about stumbling upon an unaddressed payments problem and hustling his way to the launch of a solution, Telleroo
Interview by Scott Thompson
yourself. I
BS Journal: Tell us about
Fabian Flatz: Originally I studied law and worked as a lawyer in a conservative Austrian town. Every morning I woke up and thought, ‘Yeah, I am gonna read another thick file today’. To be honest, I got fascinated by the stories of entrepreneurs from the likes of Elon Musk and said to myself ‘You need to be a part of this’. I left my Austrian home to go work in Venture Capital in Berlin, investing in other startups. That was much more exciting. Still, I wanted to get my hands dirty. Hence, I joined a startup here in London, called Onfido. There I stumbled upon a problem in the payment space that nobody was solving and now I have my own company, Telleroo.
IBS Journal: What’s your business model?
FF: We try to be as transparent as possible with our fees. That’s one differentiating factor to banks who have so many hidden fees, it takes them eight pages to list them all. We only make bank transfers for other businesses, and we simply charge per
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bank transfer. Since our customers are businesses it’s easy for us to monetise
IBS Journal: What sets you apart?
FF: No bank cares as much about online businesses as we do. We are a new kind of payments company, only using bank transfers and we are targeting the next wave of online businesses: FinTechs and marketplaces that have an app where users pay in and the app disburses funds to third parties or allows users to make withdrawals, think Deliveroo or crowdfunding sites. Also, we see the future of payments as bank transfers instead of cards. Thanks to Faster Payments, bank transfers settle instantly and cost little.
IBS Journal: Who or what inspired you to set the company up?
FF: I was working at Onfido, whose clients include Deliveroo, Monzo and Uber, and I was struck by how online businesses struggle to deal with withdrawals. I think the best inspiration for starting a business is spotting a problem that screams for a solution. We talked to a lot of people in the field but could not find an existing business that solved that problem. Also my co-
founder Michael is a former banker and he has experience in the payments field. So Telleroo is a business that’s fitting to both our backgrounds.
IBS Journal: What has been your smartest move?
FF: To thoroughly scan the market and talk to everyone before spending a lot of money. The business world is a bazaar and you can only find a great offer if you know everything and everyone. For example, every FinTech that starts out needs to cooperate with a payments company or bank to use their access to a payment system. When we talked to the first payments companies we got a couple of offers that wanted £100,000+ just as a set-up fee. We broadened our research and talked to everyone in the space. Eventually we got offers that did not require a set-up fee or only a minimal one.
IBS Journal: What was your biggest challenge/setback?
FF: The biggest challenge for us has definitely been on the technical side. In the beginning we were only two business guys with an idea about how things could be better. Having to convince engineers to join you and work
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