Brite is a provider of real-time pay-by-bank solutions, meaning you pay with your bank account. That's actually the only thing we want to do. This category in the payment sector is based on the PSD2 regulation and is proliferating. The proportion of payments that can be initiated and received in real-time is constantly increasing. The process is becoming increasingly attractive, both for companies that want to receive payments and consumers who want to pay as quickly and securely as possible.

Consumer expectations are changing dramatically. Everything is speeding up; real-time is becoming more and more important. And that also affects payments. I just had a return paid with a credit card and have been waiting for the amount to be credited to my credit card for three days. Consumer expectations will change dramatically here. It is now known that Sepa instant transfers exist. This will be the new standard, and in the future, no one will want to wait three days. As is increasingly evident in Germany, too. This will be exciting on the consumer side, for example, when it comes to refunds in e-commerce or insurance payouts. The moment the merchant processes it, we immediately make a real-time returns payment. After the button is pressed, ten seconds later, the money is in the bank account. Once consumers get used to that, it will be difficult to get out of it.

Our company comes from Sweden. So, of course, these are currently mainly brands in Sweden, Finland, and the Baltics, but increasingly also in Central Europe. An example of an international customer is Auctionet, the largest platform in Europe for auction houses. There, we not only make payments in real time when customers pay with their account, but also payouts to end customers. You can then bid online, as you would on eBay, and when the purchase is complete, payment can be made via Brite. This is an example of a customer who is active in several countries in Europe and who we are now supporting in Germany.

In theory, you can pay for anything online with Brite. In this respect, we don’t have to limit ourselves. But when you enter a new market, you have to set a focus. In Germany, instant transfers are already well established. Germany is actually an account-to-account market from the very beginning because, traditionally, there has been relatively low credit card penetration in this country. Accordingly, in contrast to other markets, the EC card is established alongside the well-known cash preference. In principle, account-to-account has been popular here for a long time. For us, this means that we are also moving more quickly into the traditional online segments, for example, in the area of ​​e-commerce. Classic online retail shopping is a big focus for us.

To shop with Brite, you only need the data that you already know by heart because you would normally use it to log into your bank account. Therefore, there is only one approval necessary. The process is not about cash management or credit lines, but rather what the consumer experience is like. And we have a team that has been working in the payment sector for 15, sometimes 20 years. I helped set up the German market for Klarna and held many discussions with dealers. Over time, you get a certain feeling for what isessential and how you can solve pain points.

Uniting different countries and local entities is more complex than you think. Basically, the category we are in has an extreme growth forecast because the advantage over credit card payments is so great, especially for retailers. We are still a young company that cannot develop this market entirely on our own. Of course, other similar providers also help to create a certain visibility for the category. Market competitors are healthy. In this respect, we coexist happily. But we have no plans for cooperation because we are already very internationally positioned. We have our own infrastructure and our own instant payment network.

We don't have any growth forecast for Germany because we only started here recently. Basically, I can say that we now handle volumes in the billions every year. And the open banking field is accelerating very quickly across Europe. There are more and more markets where the infrastructure has improved. In addition to Germany, the UK, for example, is now a large market for open banking. France is a bit behind, but for a long time you could still pay with a check in the supermarket. But the major economies in Europe are now slowly waking up. And, of course, that also accelerates the growth of the category as a whole.

Basically, there are no payment defaults with us because if the customer does not have the money in the account, he cannot make a transfer, so no payment is triggered. It's like a bank transfer. That's not possible with this process unless you want to use the overdraft facility. But that doesn't work for us. There must always be an amount available. In any case, the overdraft is currently excluded for us. We'll see how this develops in the future. And when it comes to security: You have to approve each payment individually using your online banking login. That's why we have very few cases of fraud.

We do not present sales or profit figures. We're still too young for that. I can say we have grown a lot.

Much cheaper. Overall, we are one of the cheaper payment methods. Typically, with credit card payments you still have the area of ​​chargebacks and fraud, which is quite significant. There are categories where you pay an additional 1%. And that makes them more expensive overall. This is completely eliminated for us because there are no cases of fraud due to this secure release. So, we are at the other end of the spectrum. And with us, payment is always free for the consumer. Only the retailer pays, but since it is a cheaper payment method, it makes no sense for them to charge an additional fee because they want to incentivize customers to use the cheaper payment method.

Not currently. But that's because the market is very young and not mature enough, so we don't see any consolidation yet. But we are a venture-backed scale-up. I will probably no longer be able to build a multi-generational company out of this. Accordingly, there will be an exit at some point, but we have no concrete plan for it. It's definitely not the case that we want to have sold the company in three years.