Get Started: are fintech and embedded finance growing up?
mmob's Founder and CEO, Irfan Khan, recently appeared on the Get Started podcast by SkyParlour. Through an insightful interview with Kimberley Waldron, he shared mmob’s origin story and how the business has scaled its embedded finance proposition during a tumultuous time for the industry as a whole.
mmob is an embedded finance business that provides a technology toolkit enabling API-first solutions to be embedded into apps and websites at speed. Examples of services range from credit products and insurance to open banking payments, which can be used in digital marketplaces, banking apps and more.
“Our proprietary technology we’ve been building over the past four years allows us to do the API orchestration and UI/UX to create that service fully natively to be deployed into any digital channel, anywhere in the world… so your clients can access this in as little as two hours,” Khan explains.
The business was born from experiences both leading large scale technology transformation programmes for financial institutions, and as a fintech founder – with mmob’s solution helping companies to marry the two – and these perspectives have also contributed to its growth path.
“I was in a unique position because I used to run regulatory programmes and technology, I had an accounting background, so I could run tech, understood tech, understood data, understood regulation, understood transformation in enterprises.” Khan felt that his experiences gave him an opportunity to address the pressing issue of interoperability between financial services products.
Waldron suggests that timing must also have been a huge factor for mmob. “Fintech as an industry has been going through a bit of self-reflection,” she comments. “There’s been a lot of money, time… and the impact of the technology making its way to the end user hasn’t justified that.” Perhaps, she says, the barrier to entry is being raised for founders and fintech has recognised the need for individuals from financial backgrounds “who understand that this needs to make money”.
“As an accountant I always had a closer eye on managing cash flow, P&Ls and seeing how we would scale to meet certain business cases,” says Khan. “A number of founders don’t have a financial background – they scale up too fast, realise sales cycles take three times as long as estimated, and now they’ve burned through.”
A failing fintech does not mean the idea wasn’t solving a problem
When thinking about all the propositions on the market now, and those no longer there, Khan reflects: “The ones that fail the most are the ones that are truly innovative.
“If you’re truly doing something innovative and it doesn’t fit into the market at the time, that’s a common mistake. The pace at which you go is key – having patience and understanding, being able to manage your cashflow accordingly, and scaling up at the right level is critical.”
A common pitfall for these more cutting-edge companies is not having the working capital to support their journey to product-market fit. “Very often they’re too early in the market – many could have said that about us,” says Khan, adding that really “it’s all timing”.
Since mmob has focused on a more innovative solution, there will naturally be challenges along the way. So how does its Founder view failure? “I never look at anything as a negative,” says Khan. “Because we’re pioneering in the space, everything is R&D – so even when we’ve made mistakes, I look at it as a learning opportunity. We’re refining the proposition.”
The reward for all this refining? Eventually, larger scale adoption starts to happen – and this is the key motivator. “Seeing the moment you start to get adoption from large enterprises… seeing them use your technology is the most satisfying experience ever. Knowing had I never left financial services that never would have happened – I would have been the person on the other side, vetting these propositions and thinking ‘if only’.”
If you are thinking if only about integrating a new technology proposition, or seeing your fintech product adopted by an enterprise, get in touch with us to learn more.
