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EY 7 Drivers of Growth: Bulent Tekmen, Ininal<br />
Growth Driver: Customer<br />
Banking for<br />
the unbanked<br />
With Ininal, Bulent Tekmen has found<br />
a way of giving people without bank<br />
accounts access to financial services.<br />
Keeping customers satisfied is at the<br />
heart of the company’s growth.<br />
words Christian Doherty<br />
After graduating from Yıldız<br />
Technical University with a degree<br />
in Industrial Engineering in 1997,<br />
Bulent Tekmen started as a consultant in<br />
a technology services company in Turkey<br />
before deciding to “do my own thing.” In<br />
the following years, he cofounded several<br />
start–ups. While on a business trip in the<br />
US, he wanted to use a debit card but didn’t<br />
have a US bank account. Then he discovered<br />
the prepaid cards that were widely used<br />
across the country and realized that this<br />
form of payment would be useful to some<br />
430 million people who lived in Turkey and<br />
the wider Middle East and North Africa<br />
region — many of whom did not use banks.<br />
He received capital from angel investors in<br />
Turkey and launched Ininal in 2012.<br />
What inspired you to set up Ininal?<br />
Given the large numbers of unbanked people<br />
and businesses in the region, we hoped that<br />
Ininal would become the preferred banking<br />
platform for mobile wallet solutions.<br />
We believe everything can be digitized,<br />
but digitizing money through the banking<br />
system is hard and<br />
expensive. So we were<br />
confident that we could<br />
create a better, secure and<br />
convenient way.<br />
What have you learned<br />
from interactions with your<br />
customers?<br />
The biggest lesson from our<br />
customers was that if you<br />
are transparent with them,<br />
they will support you. At<br />
Ininal, our customer services<br />
stayed open 24/7 and will<br />
always be open. To become a<br />
trusted partner, we must be<br />
very clear about our services and how they<br />
work. Customers expect open platforms on<br />
which they can provide their feedback, and<br />
the efficiency of these platforms will have<br />
a key impact on the success of financial<br />
services providers in the future.<br />
Why was putting the needs and desires<br />
of your customers first so important in<br />
unlocking growth?<br />
We believe that the most reliable route to<br />
success is to convince people through your<br />
users. If you make something that users love<br />
enough to tell their friends about, you will<br />
grow exponentially, and that will convince<br />
any investor. To do this, however, you<br />
need to understand the customers’ ever–<br />
changing behavior and needs and accustom<br />
yourself to these so that you can succeed<br />
in the market. For Ininal, this means that<br />
the customer experience simply must be<br />
embedded into our operations.<br />
What challenges did you encounter as you<br />
tried to grow the company?<br />
The biggest was regulation. Ininal needed<br />
a payment systems and electronic money<br />
license from the Banking Regulation and<br />
Supervision Agency of Turkey. As a financial<br />
services provider, we need to build our<br />
business around a very strong frame that<br />
combines regulatory compliance, technology<br />
and operations. Fraud prevention is also<br />
among the key priorities in this business.<br />
We established our own IT infrastructure<br />
that was compliant with Payment Card<br />
Industry Data Security Standards (PCI<br />
DSS) by migrating some services from<br />
MasterCard to the Ininal infrastructure in<br />
order to gain speed and elasticity for further<br />
product development and new business<br />
lines. We are only the fifth PCI DSS–certified<br />
service provider in Turkey.<br />
What other factors have been key to<br />
Ininal’s growth?<br />
We wanted to provide simple financial<br />
products to unbanked and underbanked<br />
customers by leveraging physical retail<br />
networks and technology. So far, we have<br />
enjoyed strong and sustainable growth.<br />
We have also built a strong network<br />
among merchants, retailers, consumers and<br />
traditional financial services providers. The<br />
Ininal physical card is now being sold and<br />
topped up at 15,000 locations — 10 times<br />
more than the number of branches run by<br />
the biggest bank in Turkey — while our virtual<br />
card can be downloaded from the Ininal<br />
wallet application and used across borders.<br />
Finally, we have made significant<br />
investments in infrastructure, as well as<br />
regulatory compliance and new products, to<br />
produce the building blocks that enable us to<br />
dominate the Turkish prepaid card market.<br />
What will be the next step in<br />
Ininal’s development?<br />
We are expanding our marketing efforts<br />
and increasing the number of users: Ininal<br />
is still growing virally. Starting with all the<br />
big players as preferred merchants, we<br />
hope the network–effect business model<br />
will drive growth.<br />
Then there is the issue of increasing<br />
online spending and the Ininal merchant<br />
ecosystem: our merchant commissions<br />
will grow as the number of online shoppers<br />
grows — indeed, it is thought that the growth<br />
in online shopping will outperform internet<br />
usage growth in the coming years.<br />
<strong>Exceptional</strong> February–June 2016<br />
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