UK-headquartered fintech Lanistar is readying itself to launch in the UK in the Spring.
RBI reported the launch of Lanistar back in March 2020 when it secured seed funding of £2m. At the time, Lanistar stated its ambition was to grow Lanistar to achieve unicorn status.
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Over the last two years Lanistar has invested heavily in Latin America. Specifically, it launched in Brazil and now has over 20,000 customers on-board.
Lanistar says that its early success in Brazil is extremely promising and will be followed by further expansion in other LATAM markets. Lanistar expects to grow to over 1 million customers by mid-2023.
Lanistar’s focus in the UK and EU has taken a backseat due to its LatAm focus. It now says that it will refocus its expansion on its ‘home-turf’.
Lanistar: ‘one-stop shop solution’
Lanistar’s CEO, Jeremy Baber, said: “The key to our launch (in Brazil) and those to follow in other parts of LatAm, has been our alliance partnership with Mastercard members, who offered a ‘Banking as a Service’ solution.”
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By GlobalDataThis means Lanistar has a ‘one-stop shop’ solution for market entry in the region. Its suite of services includes bank accounts, card issuing, fully digital onboarding, regulatory compliance, KYC, and transaction monitoring.
“This has allowed Lanistar to concentrate on customer acquisition via our ever-growing social influencer family, and best-of-breed customer service, and continue development of the customer proposition with new and innovative services. The successful launch we have seen in Brazil with Bankly/Acesso Solutions, has made us review our growth plans in other regions. This means we are making a change in the UK and EU.”
Lanistar ends Modulr tie-up
Lanistar is now seeking a UK and EU partner to provide the same ‘one-stop shop’ solution enjoyed by Lanistar in Latin America. To that end, Lanistar has chosen to change its UK and EU partner from Modulr to its current card provider.
Baber added: “We have had a close relationship with Modulr over the past two years and respect them. But regrettably they could not offer the Full Banking solution which has been key to our success in LatAm. Our current Mastercard Partner, can now offer us that same ‘one stop shop’ for the UK and EU. Therefore, it was logical to make a clean break from Modulr and put our reliance fully on them for our full UK launch and later in the year in Europe.”
