As the financial industry grapples with serving an increasingly mobile and digital-first customer base, neobanks are stepping up to fill the gaps left by legacy institutions. Raman Korneu, CEO and Co-founder of myTU, shares his insights on how cloud-native technology and AI can drive a new era of accessible, efficient banking services.
Korneu also delves into the unique challenges faced by underserved customer segments like digital nomads, freelancers and economic migrants, and markets like travel agents and tour operators, and how myTU is tailoring its products to meet their needs.
The travel sector, in particular, is ripe for Fintech disruption as it rebounds from the pandemic. Innovative solutions like “Travel Now, Pay Later” could reshape how consumers book and finance their trips, while also unlocking new growth opportunities for traditional tour operators and travel agents.
myTU is a neobank that uses a cloud-only infrastructure and AI designed to make essential financial services easier to access, more secure, and more cost-effective.
It’s an approach that seeks to match the needs of underserved markets and clients, including families, freelancers, digital nomads, and businesses often overlooked by larger banks. myTU currently counts with more than 30,000 customers representing over 100 nationalities. Headquartered in Vilnius, Lithuania, myTU was founded in 2019 and has raised €6 million to date. The Fintech is an extension of UAB Travel Union and is registered in Lithuania as an electronic money institution licensed by the Bank of Lithuania.
Our conversation with Raman is shared below.
Crowdfund Insider: Please tell us a bit about the genesis of myTU and the challenges in the banking sector you set out to solve.
Raman Korneu: myTU was originally founded in 2019 under the brand name “Travel Union” with the vision of becoming a neobank specifically tailored for the travel industry. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, right as we received our EMI license, the travel sector was severely impacted. We quickly recognized the need to adapt our strategy. While still maintaining our roots in travel, we broadened our focus to serve other underserved customer segments, such as digital nomads, freelancers, and economic migrants.
This pivot allowed us to address the unique challenges these groups face in accessing basic financial services, as they often struggle to open bank accounts due to a lack of stable address, regular income, or credit history – factors that many traditional banks view as too risky.
The same goes for businesses operating in complex, non-conventional, or higher-risk areas. Legacy banks frequently reject them outright rather than take the time to properly assess their risk profile. At the same time, traditional banks’ outdated technology leads to slow, costly processes, in onboarding, for example, and inflexible decision-making.
So we founded myTU in 2019 to leverage the latest cloud and AI technology to make core banking services more accessible, efficient and cost-effective for those currently underserved or overlooked.
Crowdfund Insider: How do you solve those accessibility and efficiency issues from a technology perspective?
Raman Korneu: It really comes down to our unique tech stack. We’re one of the first banking apps built entirely on Google Cloud Platform, using Google Cloud Spanner for secure, scalable data management. This setup slashes IT costs and enables us to handle rapid growth.
Critically, we’ve also developed a proprietary AI-driven compliance engine, leveraging tools like ChatGPT, to automate parts of the customer due diligence and AML processes. This allows us to efficiently onboard riskier customers that other banks reject, while still effectively managing that risk. It’s all about achieving compliance at much lower cost through smart technology.
Crowdfund Insider: What banking products have you launched so far to serve these customer segments you mentioned?
Raman Korneu: For individuals and families, we offer a full-featured mobile banking app supporting accounts, cards, and payments in multiple languages. It has tools like dedicated savings pots, automatic payments, spending statistics and a loyalty program allowing to collect time loyalty points and spend them on special partner offers in myTU Outlet.
One differentiator is our family accounts – we provide kids their own accounts/cards, coupled with strong parental controls and allowance management features to encourage financial literacy. It has resonated well with our international customer base.
For business clients, it’s all about fully digital onboarding, instant SEPA payments, and easy integration with accounting systems. Getting set up with European IBANs and multi-user access is seamless. We also offer tailored Business API solution for secure, efficient and fully automated payments. It allows integrating payments into our clients’ business system and building completely custom, automated payment workflows.
This solution addresses the needs of different payment and financial services providers, i.e.consumer lending providers, e.g. payout delays during peak demand periods, enabling them to offer timely services. It also opens the door for them to introduce new products in the future, such as BNPL, where transaction speed is of utmost importance.
Looking ahead, we’re excited to roll out things like travel loans to serve the rebound in tourism post-COVID.
Crowdfund Insider: You mentioned economic migrants as a target market. What are your offerings and plans there?
Raman Korneu: Right – this is an important market that is currently badly neglected by the financial services industry. A common challenge migrants face is the requirement for proof of residential address, typically through utility bills, which can be difficult to obtain when first arriving in a new country. We understand these hurdles and are working on introducing new methods and services to facilitate a more accessible banking experience for migrants.
We have made significant improvements in our processes to onboard migrants more efficiently. One key aspect of this is our ability to offer banking accounts to individuals who are entrepreneurs or starting small companies in their new countries of residence.
Moreover, we recognize that migrants often live in one country while working in another, necessitating banking services that accommodate cross-border transactions without unnecessary obstacles. Traditional banks often fall short in this regard, but we are committed to bridging this gap.
In December, we introduced QR code payment capabilities within our app, which we believe could be particularly beneficial for migrant entrepreneurs looking to simplify accepting payments from their customers across EU/EEA. This feature allows for seamless and secure payments without the need for traditional banking infrastructure.
While we are still refining our offerings for economic migrants, our goal is to provide a comprehensive suite of services that cater to their unique banking needs, ensuring financial inclusion and accessibility for this underserved segment of the population.
Crowdfund Insider: And you mentioned the travel market opportunity?
Raman Korneu: Absolutely. The travel sector is close to our hearts – as we spoke about earlier. Now, with travel rebounding strongly, it’s the perfect time to revisit that original vision. We see a major opportunity in “Travel Now, Pay Later” or TNPL services. The concept is simple – allowing travelers to book now and spread the cost over multiple installments. It’s proven to boost conversion rates and average order values substantially.
While BNPL giants like Klarna have partnered with some OTAs, we see an untapped opportunity with more traditional tour operators and travel agents. This segment has been slower to digitize but still represents a huge chunk of the European holiday market, which is north of €250B annually.
Crowdfund Insider: That’s a big pie. How exactly are you addressing that?
Raman Korneu: The key is that these operators can often access better rates than the online portals, as they’re able to commit to longer-term volume contracts with airlines and hotels. However, they’ve historically struggled with the working capital requirements, as they need to reserve customer funds in trust accounts while also prepaying their suppliers.
This is where we come in. By embedding TNPL into these operators’ booking flows, we can help them boost sales among budget-conscious consumers. Critically, we also shift the prepayment burden from the operator to us as the financing partner. That frees up cash for the operator to secure even better discounts or reinvest in growth. It’s a win-win.
We’re already piloting TNPL with select partners, and the early results are very promising. Typical terms might be a 3-month installment plan at a low-interest rate. For an average European family spending €2,000 on their annual holiday, that added flexibility can be a game-changer.
Beyond pure BNPL, we’re also exploring ancillary products like cancel-for-any-reason insurance, flight disruption coverage, and more. As a digital-first, full-stack fintech, we can be much nimbler in crafting tailored packages for our travel partners versus their traditional bank relationships.
Strategically, we see TNPL as the wedge that gets us in the door. But the long-term play is to become the end-to-end financial control center for travel businesses by layering in things like working capital loans, FX hedging, and real-time data insights. It’s a massive space ripe for disruption.
Crowdfund Insider: Any notable successes or milestones to date you can share?
Raman Korneu: Sure. We recently passed 30,000 retail customers across 100+ countries, with 40% weekly active users. On the business side, we onboarded our first 100 SME clients just a month after launching that product.
What we’re most proud of is our cost base. We’re acquiring retail users for under €10 versus €100+ for some neobank peers. We run the whole bank on less than €1,000/month in infrastructure costs, supporting that with a lean team of just 25 employees. I think it validates our thesis that a modern cloud-native fintech can operate far more efficiently than incumbents.
But we’re just scratching the surface. With our latest funding round, the goal is to keep expanding the product suite, seeking a full EU banking license, and becoming the go-to partner for underserved verticals like travel. We see a huge market opportunity to build a fairer, smarter digital banking system for a mobile-first world, and we’re excited to pursue that mission.
