What is the name of your solution?
Welcome Account
Provide a one-line summary of your solution.
The neobank for newcomers
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Paris, FranceIn what country is your solution team headquartered?
What type of organization is your solution team?
For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
Whatever the reason for their arrival (work, study, humanitarian), all immigrants have difficulties with banks. They don't fit the profile of the typical bank customer, and their situations are poorly understood. They have no information, no choice, and very often no access to services tailored to their needs.
Without a bank account, it's very difficult to live in France and in Europe. It's not possible to receive your salary, pay in stores or bills, buy products online, and so on.
This delays social and economic integration. Ultimately, it's a loss of value for France, because these are people who work and consume.
The problem is massive, since every year, there are 90 million immigrants in Europe, including 3 million who come to settle every year.
What is your solution?
Welcome Account is a neobank for newcomers (workers, refugees, students).
Welcome Account is a mission-driven company that provides simple and inclusive financial solutions for all the newcomers who come to Europe to work, study or simply to live
It targets an audience of over 90 million immigrants in Europe and aims to accelerate their financial inclusion.
It offers a simplified KYC path to open a bank account for newcomers in full compliance.
We are offering a payment account, a VISA debit card and a multilingual application to allow people to manage their finance easily.
Beyond the usual banking services, Welcome Account aims to be a life partner to accelerate the economical and social intergration of newcomers through technology and the generative artificial intelligence.
We are developing a GenAI agant that helps the newcomer to better manage its finances and gives many information for improving the integration.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
Immigrants from Africa and Asia who want to create a new life in Europe are our primary targets. When they arrive, access to banking services is a major challenge. The services are not adapted to their situation. Normally, they spend a lot of money but receive limited service. Most of them come for work and earn a decent revenue.
They normally come from under-banked countries, so they miss out on the benefits of banking services. Being accompanied by a banking player who understands their situation can change their lives and give them significant financial health.
How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?
Rooh SAVAR - Co-founder & CEO
Rooh is an entrepreneur and journalist. He specialized in communications and media at the beginning of his career, he graduated from École supérieure de journalisme in Paris. He also founded Jahan Info, a startup specializing in geostrategic intelligence using artificial intelligence. In 2018, he became the President of SINGA, an NGO promoting migration-based innovation. As a political refugee, Rooh himself faced the same problems as all newcomers.
Caroline SPAN - Co-founder & COO
After graduating from Université Panthéon-Sorbonne and ESCP Business School, she started her carrer in politics. Caroline managed the Orange startup startup accelerator and coordinated the international network of Orange startup accelerators (17 worldwide). In 2020, she became co-director of La MedNum, France's leading player in digital inclusion. She launched 4 services and multiplied revenues by 10 in 2 years.
Caroline & Rooh have known each other for over three years as they were managers of two partner organizations (La MedNum and Singa). Rooh as the president of SINGA helped many refugee entrepreneurs. Caroline created the website https://refugies.info/ a source of information for refugees in 2019-2020.
Hamze Ghalebi is our non-founder CTO. He was an engineer in Iran. As a
refugee in France, Hamze is self-taught in coding. He also studied
at Télécom Paris, one of the best engineering schools in France. He co-founded Remotion, an security startup in edtech.
Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?
Foster financial and digital inclusion by supporting access to credit, digital identity tools, and insurance while securing privacy and personal data.Which of the UN Sustainable Development Goals does your solution address?
What is your solution’s stage of development?
PilotWhy are you applying to Solve?
Being part a MIT Solve will be game changer for us.
In France and Europe, we have a less positive culture about immigration.
Every day, we are facing challenge to explain how immigration is necessay for an economic growth.
We are resolving a massive issue that is unknown for non immigrant people.
One of the only way to convince is to be supported by recognized and credible institutions
We're convinced that the support of an institute like MIT can give us undeniable legitimacy.
Of course, being a part of a community is important for us. We could leran from other Solvers and also share our own experience. We love to giveback !
In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?
Who is the Team Lead for your solution?
Rooh Savar
What makes your solution innovative?
Firstly, immigration is intensifying worldwide, and particularly in Europe. Over 3 million immigrants arrive every year to live on the continent. With almost 90 million immigrants, Europe is the most attractive continent. It's a bigger market than Germany.
At the same time, banking regulation is increasing, and banks are becoming more and more reluctant to accept non-European clients. The combination of these two realities has created growing financial exclusion among this population. Automation of many customer onboarding processes, notably KYC, makes the new tools unable to process identity documents from many countries. Most customer risk detection algorithms are unable to adapt to the situation of a newcomer, which is naturally different from that of a native.
At the same time, two technological revolutions are enabling us to tackle this problem and offer a sustainable solution. The emergence of fintech and its spectacular development over the last few years has created the ideal conditions for offering highly segmented banking services. The AI revolution is also giving us the ability to tackle complex problems and come up with hyper-customized solutions on an industrial scale.
Describe in simple terms how and why you expect your solution to have an impact on the problem.
Banks play an essential role in people's economic lives in Western societies. Banking discrimination is over with Welcome Account. With us, the entire user experience is tailored to the real needs of newcomers. Powered by GenAl, we provide the right services at the right prices to help them improve their lives. Thanks to a multilingual platform, our users benefit from a welcoming user experience with us. Being with Welcome Account is not another additional cost for immigrants, but having a life partner at your side.
What are your impact goals for your solution and how are you measuring your progress towards them?
We want to give to more immigrants access not only to a bank account, but also to financial services that help them improve their lives and create a stable, sustainable financial situation for themselves and their families.
We are measuring our impact by measuring the number of bank accounts opened each year, and the additional services we can offer each customer (e.g. credit, loans, savings, insurance, financial literacy).
What we would like to measure is the reduction of time of integration. We know it could take 5 to 10 years and we would reduce it to 1 year.
Describe the core technology that powers your solution.
One of the major challenges the banking sector faces is the difficulty of large-scale personalization of inclusive financial solutions for minorities, especially newcomers. Thanks to advances in generative AI, we can make this personalization scalable and dynamic. We use AI to create personalized virtual agents for each user. Our ambition is to build a vast and complex network of these virtual experts. Imagine thousands of independent virtual entities, each specialized in a particular subject (budget management, administration, financial habits in a specific country), working in tandem to manage the specific needs of distinct groups of users. This approach enables us to democratize access to financial services at an individual level. The Generative IA helps us in a number of ways:
- optimizing internal processes by simplifying KYC and anti-fraud procedures, thanks to in-depth knowledge of our customers
- improving customer service with an agent able to respond faster to user requests.
- the deployment of an ultra-personalized experience thanks to a multilingual and soon voice-enabled application capable of offering recommendations tailored to the user's profile. We were selected by Microsoft to be part of their first GenIA startup cohort. More than just a bank, we aim to become a life partner for our users.
Which of the following categories best describes your solution?
A new business model or process that relies on technology to be successful
Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:
If your solution has a website or an app, provide the links here:
welcomeaccount.com
In which countries do you currently operate?
Which, if any, additional countries will you be operating in within the next year?
How many people work on your solution team?
Rooh Savar, CEO - full time
Caroline Span, COO - full time
Hamze Ghalebi, CTO, full time
Mansour Mahboubi, Tech Lead, full time contractor
Hojjat Jalali, Product Designer, full time contractor
Marie Lecarderonnel, Compliance officer, full time contractor
Saleh Shojaei, front developer, full time contractor
How long have you been working on your solution?
Rooh Savar- since February 2022 (2 years)
Caroline Span - since May 2022 (2 years)
Hamze Ghalebi- since June 2023 (1 year)
Mansour Mahboubi- since June 2023 (1 year)
Hojjat Jalali- since Octobre 2023 (9 months)
Marie Lecarderonnel- since October 2023 (9 months)
Saleh Shojaei - since July 2023 (1 year)
Tell us about how you ensure that your team is diverse, minimizes barriers to opportunity for staff, and provides a welcoming and inclusive environment for all team members.
We are convinced that diversity is a source of innovation.
Our team is made up of French nationals and immigrants or refugees in key roles. We also have LGBTQI+ people in our team.
We create a working environment where diversity is valued. Everyone's cultural and personal specifity is respected.
We create moments where our team members can share their particularities with pride.
What is your business model?
Our business model is B2B2C so we sign deals with companies, universities, NGO that welcome newcomers.
We have our first 1000 clients signed through the biggest NGO of the world (Red Cross), we are negiociating with more than 20 companies to provide bank account to their employees.
We have three sources of revenues:
- Subscription
Our main revenue is based on subscription. The cost is 4.99€/month/user. The first year is paid by the company or the NGO
- Interchange
On each card transaction, we perceive around 0.1%of the transaction
- Commission on additionnal serrvices
We are more than just a bank, we provide many other services on which we perceive a commision from our partners.
Do you primarily provide products or services directly to individuals, to other organizations, or to the government?
Organizations (B2B)What is your plan for becoming financially sustainable, and what evidence can you provide that this plan has been successful so far?
We have raised 660k€ the last year thanks to our business angels, prizes and loans. This first round was made to start the company, launch our first product and recruit a team.
Our business model is something totally new in the fintech world. It's in adequation with our target because newcomers are often linked to a company, a school or a NGO when they arrive.
This acquisition strategy was thought and built according to our own experience. We have signed with the Red Cross and we are in discussion with 20+ companies.
We are aiming to reach 100 000 clients to be profitable.
Technology helps us to optimize our internal process, all our operational tasks are being automatized. This part helps us to reduce the costs.
Solution Team
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Our Organization
Welcome Place