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Stocard are perhaps Europe’s most successful Fintech measured by numbers of users – they have over 60 million users of their App (which gets 4.7* on Google Play) and process an amazing 2 billion transactions per annum – a phenomenal achievement. Their users save some 2-5% on average on their shopping and in some countries up to 20% of the population use Stocard for their daily shopping :-O

Goss.jpg">Goss-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150">But what are Digital Wallets? What are their use cases?

Where are Digital Wallets going in the future? Will they keep encroaching further into retail Financial Services as a whole?

There is perhaps no-one better placed to address these questions that Bjorn Goss, co-founder and CEO of Stocard who has roughly a decade on the case and, along with explaining shopping to me (which I clearly don’t understand as I am not getting these available savings)  lays out a clear and credible ambitious vision for the future of the Digital Wallet.

Topics discussed include:

• Bjorn’s journey from music studios to Stocard
• Bjorn’s first venture selling T-shirts
• the relationship of early entrepreneurial experiments and later entrepreneurialism
• the need to connect childhood experimentalism and adult responsibility in the creative process
• “As long as you don’t stop you haven’t failed”
• the history of the digital wallet – whence did it arrive
• confusing usage of terminology – is Paypal a wallet? Is a browser autofill-in a digital wallet
• Digital Wallets’ origins as the digital version of a Physical Wallet
• extension of the functionality in particular to automatically handling store loyalty cards and offers (being the element that generates the savings)
• challenges in general of relying on smartphones given that their reliability is not 100.0%
• the value of having two digital banking provides in case one app fails
• Stocard’s gender split of users is roughly 50:50 men:women
• the average Stocard user has 13 loyalty cards :-O 
• model of Asia – Wechat, Alipay…
• Over 6,000 retailers are listed on the App
• these retailers provide added-value offers via the app increasing savings
• discounts vary per vertical – furniture retailers eg may give 10-30% off in such a way
• most usage of Stocard is offline
• I fail to realise that the “tap and pay” contactless limit only applies to cards not to one’s phone if it includes digital biometric identity verification
• the ease of use of Stocard “if you can use WhatsApp you can use Stocard”
• up to 20% of the population use Stocard for their daily shopping in some countries
• founded 2012
• where do coupons come from?
• the future of Digital Wallets – continuing to expand further into consumer FS eg financing – By Now Pay Later
• Digital Wallets as the daily first point of contact for potentially all retail FS
• the far richer data on the customer that Digital Wallets will have to help assess credit risk compared to Banks
• some European Banks are waking up to this and starting to get involved in elements of the sector
• Robinhood launch of a card as demonstrating the value of being the daily point of contact with customers
• Stocard have offices in Germany, Paris, Rotterdam, Milan, Sydney, Toronto, London
• Stocard’s expansion plans
• Stocard does not monetise user’s data but makes money from fees for in-app adverts by retailers
• you can use the app without even creating an account

And much much more

Share and enjoy!