After news that the Kazakhstan-based Kaspi.kz acquired the Ukrainian Portmone Group to enter the local market, Facebook users started to see ads of the Leobank project. It is a bank without branches (neobank) in Azerbaijan, which is very similar to the Ukrainian monobank. The similarities include the visual design of the banks’ apps, their functions, features, and even the idea behind their logos.
Oleg Gorokhovskyi, one of the founders of monobank, in a comment to AIN.UA, said that the team Fintech Band and monobank have nothing to do with the launch of Leobank.
It turned out that Leobank has Ukrainian roots. This is a project of Fintech Farm launched by Dmytro Dubilet, Oleksandr Vytiaz (creator of Privat24), and Nikolay Bezkrovnyi, with whom Dubilet met a few years ago in London. An editor of AIN.UA talked to Dubilet to get short answers about the entrepreneur’s new business.
Fintech Farm
Fintech Farm is a Ukrainian company that has developed a platform for branchless banks. The platform has been sold to banks that are interested in launching a similar project. The first client was Unibank from Azerbaijan, so together, they launched Leobank.
Dubilet does not disclose when the Fintech Farm team was founded, how long the platform was under development, and how much they invested in the project. The size of the team is also unknown, but the dev team resides in Ukraine. Dubilet only stated that the company shares its options with team members.
Fintech Farm management is ready to launch neobanks with banks from various countries, but do not plan to enter the Ukrainian market.
Leobank and monobank
Dubilet does not hide the fact that Leobank and monobank are pretty similar, but the main goal is to make a clear and simple product for the user. The landings and interfaces look similar, and there is a mascot (a talisman) — another member of the cat family. The monobank’s mascot is a white cat, while Leobank has a lion. There are also cashback, a large loan limit, and 62 days to repay it.
The launch of Leobank is scheduled for the end of September, while they are collecting applications for the cards.
In a comment for AIN.UA, Oleg Gorokhovskyi said that he knew about Dmytro Dubilet’s interest in fintech projects after he left politics and returned to business. But he did not know about the launch of Fintech Farm.
“Now Dmitry just has to repeat our Ukrainian success in Azerbaijan, as it looks like a good quality copy,” Gorokhovskyi added.
- Dmitry Dubilet and Oleg Gorokhovskyi, and several other founders launched Fintech Band and monobank. After going to politics, Dubilet left the team and withdrew from the shareholders.
- Currently, Dubilet is working on his own projects (Ba Food, Dobrozem, Finmap, Checkbox) and investing.
- monobank is one of the largest banks in the country in terms of the number of users – there are just a little less than 4 million of them.
- After leaving PrivatBank, Oleksandr Vytiaz was engaged in the development of his own company Middleware, and its main product – the Corezoid platform.
