Mynt leads digital development in business services
Managing receipts for work-related expenses can be a time-consuming and complicated process for individual employees. This has resulted in the emergence of a number of initiatives designed to simplify and digitalise the process in recent years.
One such initiative is Mynt’s business solutions. This particular journey began in a conference room in Stockholm when two colleagues, Baltsar Sahlin and Johan Obermayer, spent yet another Friday afternoon going through the week’s receipts that would then be entered into their company accounting system.
This prompted the idea to collaborate on the creation of a digital solution that was more flexible and more efficient.
“We saw opportunities in PSD 2 [the EU’s second banking services directive] and that many Swedish companies have already taken great strides to digitalise their accounting. From the outset, our ambition has been to solve problems that I experienced as an employee and from running a small business in the past,” says Sahlin, Mynt CEO.
It also marked the start of Mynt, and the arrival of Magnus Wideberg, who joined Sahlin and Obermayer to form Mynt’s founding trio. Early on, they understood that the key to making their service a success was ensuring that it worked seamlessly with customers’ banks and existing accounting services. By connecting their innovative solutions to various accounting systems, all users need to do is take photographs of their receipts to enter them correctly.
With smooth receipt management in place, the next step was to enter into a partnership with a global payment network company. An important reason why Mynt decided to partner with Visa was because of the opportunity to, together with Visa’s local fintech team, develop an attractive card-based offering for small and medium-sized companies in the premium segment. The goal is for all employees at customer companies to receive their own Visa card - debit or credit - and to set a predetermined spending limit.
“As a company employee, you need to be able to charge expenses. These can be anything from marketing to purchasing or entertainment in situations where individuals should not have to be out of pocket to ensure business works. In addition, it sends out an important signal of trust in the individual.”
Together with Visa’s Nordic fintech team, for the past two years Mynt has designed a card programme that is tailored to the company’s needs. The fact that Visa can offer global expertise was crucial in the choice of partner.
We received a lot of attention and support from Visa for our ambition to develop digital business solutions.
- Baltsar Sahlin, CEO and founder of Mynt
“Visa’s strength is that it’s a global payment network with digital payments expertise and presence in almost all the world’s markets. At the same time, it has a strong presence in Sweden. As a result, as a relatively new fintech company, we received a lot of attention and support for our ambition to develop digital business solutions that make it easy for customers to manage their accounting,” says Sahlin.
The summer of 2021 was a key milestone on Mynt’s business journey. This was when the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority granted Mynt permission to provide electronic money services. It also opened up opportunities to step up co-operation with Visa and apply to become a Principal member. In practice, this means that the Mynt may issue its own company payment cards.
“With a Principal membership, we have gained a unique competitive advantage because we don’t have to involve third parties. This means that we have considerable control over the product, can tailor the onboarding process, and keep down fees for customers, which is important.”
What are the company’s future plans?
“In the short term, we will launch our products in Norway, Finland, the Netherlands and Germany. These will essentially be the same offerings as in Sweden with certain adaptations for each market. Due to our collaboration with Visa, we have a fantastic product that can also be scaled up. This gives us the opportunity to grow as a company at the pace we want”, says Sahlin, adding:
“In the longer term, I believe we are in a market where the demand for services will explode in the future and I feel that we are well positioned for when that happens.”
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