💸How to build a bank people love to use: Cconversation with Ali Niknam // TechBBQ 2025

Definitely. And you can ask me anything because the topic of banking is only limited in the amount of interest, I guess. But you can ask me about startups, you can ask me about Europe versus US, whatever you're into.

Well, that's actually a really great question. Before I do answer, because we don't have a presence in Denmark, I'm curious, is anyone here familiar with bunq? Not too bad. Does anybody here actually use bunq? Okay, that's not too bad. Okay. Well, that's the first problem, right? So the issue with money is that it is very heavily regulated and us as people, as humanity, we love travel and the advancement in travel and the breaking down of international borders has happened much more quickly than the unification of regulation. So for us as bunq, if we would want to offer our services here in Denmark, we would have to have local presence, like physical presence. We would have to have contact with the local regulator. We would have to comply with local law and regulation and all of this slows everything down and makes everything more complicated. Especially for people like our lovely host who has lived in multiple countries. You know, you move around, you need to sign up again. You run into problems because of tax issues because you need to report all of these different bank accounts to the tax authorities. So, I think the number one issue to answer your question is regulation. And I think one of the things that bunq is incredibly good at is to hide all of that complexity so that our users can simply use their bank in the way they want to.

Yeah. There are no shortcuts unfortunately. It's just a lot of discipline and a lot of grinding. Regulators are regulators. They're the same everywhere more or less. And so you need to spend a lot of time into understanding what they want, what's important to them to be sure that you're compliant, invest in compliance while keeping all that stuff on the background so that it doesn't actually hurt the experience for users. That's the real complexity. It's not difficult being compliant. I mean, it's basically a set of rules and you can be compliant. It's difficult being compliant while you create an experience that people enjoy.

Everything. Everything. I've had a, so for the people who don't know me, bunq is my third unicorn. I've had two other startups that were both somewhat successful. The difficulty with banking is it's a low interest product. So people usually don't consider, you don't wake up thinking, hey, today I'm going to go shop for a new bank. It's very heavily regulated. The regulation is fragmented. And all that regulation also kind of forces you to create a product that is only marginally different to what's out there.

We are in the process of applying.

Well, I've been living in New York part of the time for a number of years now. I love the US. I think it's called the land of the free. At bunq, we call us the bank of the free. So there's a natural match there. Places like New York, San Francisco, both coasts are very international. So that's a natural fit for the audience we're trying to approach. So in that sense, it fits like a glove. But then when it comes to regulation, and I'm sure you'll agree, bureaucracy in the US the last several years has reached its high point, I think. And to be able to get a banking license in the US, you need to deal with three regulators, the OCC, the FDIC, and the Fed. So that makes the process a little bit cumbersome.