So I have been seeing this promotion every other day on 20minuten and I opened a free account with them in less than 5 minutes (no paper work) and also got 100CHF after the first spend.

Yapeal informed me that I can close my account anytime and there is no fees for account closure. But I am still not convinced why would they allow me close my free account after giving me free money. There should definitely be a catch somewhere.

Any thoughts on this promotion?


https://yapeal.ch/en/

A bunch of the management are ex-CTO types from UBS.

They're not very open about how they are regulated, ownership structure etc - they have a FinTech license from Finma but not sure what that really means:

https://www.finews.com/news/english-...-finma-startup

The catch is that they got themself someone piping an info down his social graph about their amazing new company, which gives away money just for some simple and usual action. This money is not free, it is a price paid for the customers loyalty, which pays back with a nice multiplier in many forms.

It also makes sense financially. 100CHF is not an unusual price to pay for a real customer of a payments app (PP was giving away 20 USD to a customer long before this industry became huge and fiercely competitive). I didn't see Yapeal's models and have no idea about their funds to burn, but a guesstimate for their CLV would be in the region of 666CHF just for the payments app and the card (they call it a banking app), not talking about "ecosystem". Even if they have a retention rate of 25% (and it may be even higher for people passing through all the hurdles to get "free" 100 CHF), that would put direct CAC at 400 CHF leaving a good margin. This is an EXTREME oversimplification of unit economy, it's only here to show, that it doesn't have to be a catch in their generosity (it may well be though - read the small print, they may put your on the Santa's naughty list).

EPI believes that the new payment system will help shift from cash to digital money. It now says that more than 50% of retail payment transactions in Europe are still made in cash.

By putting forward a "truly European solution", EPI wants more consumers to pay across Europe and help more merchants accept digital payments.

The idea is that this should also help European merchants. The system will wipe out Visa and Mastercard payments, although European banks will want to make their own profits

The fact that it is likely to be one fixed percentage fee rather than changing fees depending on card providers and schemes, however, will help merchants.

Broadly speaking, EPI hopes that the pan-European system will reinforce the continent's single market and single digital agenda.

EPI member banks include BBVA, BNP Paribas, Groupe BPCE, CaixaBank, Commerzbank, Crédit Agricole, Crédit Mutuel, Deutsche Bank, Deutcher Sparkassen-und Giroverband, DZ BANK Group, ING, KBC Group, Laque Postale, Banco Santander, Société Générale and UniCredit.

What has that got to do with a Swiss FinTech startup?