Croatia is a paradoxical country at times. It boasts an outdated, draconian system that likes to throw obstacles wrapped in red tape in the path of success for entrepreneuers and their ideas, leading many of them to either give up or go elsewhere to operate under a different flag, but yet, so many startups and so much success can be found here in spite of an unfriendly and self-limiting system. Meet Aircash.
This impressive Croatian startup, Aircash, has 40,000 users and is already hot on the heels of the likes of Keks Pay and Revolut.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Bernard Ivezic writes on the 10th of November, 2019, Aircash is the first Croatian fintech to launch its own mobile wallet. So far, mobile applications (apps) that allow you to replace your physical wallet with your mobile phone and thus pay that way were only offered by actual banks – Erste bank with KEKS Pay, Zagrebačka banka with Telekom Banking and mZaba, then come the likes of Revolut and Monesa.
Aircash is a little bit different from them all, in the sense that it isn’t a bank but a new type of financial institution in itself. The Croatian National Bank (CNB/HNB) has now also granted it a full EU license for electronic money.
So far, only three companies have managed to ”get their hands” on such a license: HT, PBZ Card and Erste Card Club. In addition to the first major regulatory success for a Croatian fintech, Aircash has also gained market success. The Aircash mobile app already has 40,000 users and is the third most popular fintech app in all of Croatia. For the sake of comparison, Keks Pay has 62,000 users and Revolut has 50,000 users, meaning Aircash is definitely on the right path.
Hrvoje Ćosić, the founder and director of Aircash, says they have been building their market position for just over two years now. In mid-2018, they had 15,000 users and a weekly turnover of 250,000 kuna in total.
“We now have 40,000 active users and 48,000 people have downloaded the app, while the traffic we worked with on a weekly basis last year is now our daily traffic and both indicators are growing,” Ćosić says.
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