Monaize - E-Banking Services for SMEs

Entitled "Smallest bank in the world" 8 people to run it at its maximum. Big thanks to all of them.

Position: CTO, co-founder & shareholder Current status: Business ceased Start date: 01/19/2017 End date: 01/02/2018

Monaize was a mobile-first corporate e-banking solution for freelancers & SMEs in France. The vision was to built a complete platform of financial services for small structures.

Monaize’s core product was a fully mobile e-banking platform tailored for freelancers, independent workers, and small businesses (TPE/SMEs) — a segment that traditional banks historically underserved with clunky onboarding and services. It provided:

A business current account with a local IBAN.

A business-oriented Mastercard card.

A smartphone app (iOS/Android) for day-to-day financial management.

A rapid KYB (Know Your Business) onboarding that let users open accounts in just a few minutes with their phone.

This streamlined experience was fundamentally about lowering the barrier to entry for entrepreneurs who don’t want or need traditional banks.

🔌 2. Open, Partner-Driven Ecosystem

Rather than building every service itself, the platform was envisioned as modular and partner-friendly:

Third-party integrations for professional insurance, payment solutions, crowd-lending/crowdfunding, factoring/financing tools, etc.

A strategy of collaboration with external financial service providers to add features freelancers actually need, without reinventing the wheel in each domain.

This “platform approach” was similar to how some modern fintechs embed banking, lending, and payments by plugging best-in-class services into a single dashboard.

Monaize pursued an ambitious “banking meets blockchain” strategy — setting it apart from many fintech challengers.

The road map also included integrating crypto wallets and supporting fiat-pegged cryptocurrencies and blockchain-enabled value transfers directly in the banking app — a kind of “hybrid” fiat + crypto business finance experience.

Monaize’s approach wasn’t just conventional digital banking; it deliberately positioned itself as:

A challenger bank focused on a niche segment (freelancers/TPE).

A bridge between traditional banking services and blockchain infrastructure.

A platform that could scale internationally with partner services across markets.