The Finnish online financial services provider Holvi has announced a partnership with new crowdfunding site Mesenaatti, also based in Finland.
Holvi’s platform will provide users of Mesenaatti with a solid banking backend and services, such as project-budgeting and expense tracking not usually associated with crowdfunding sites.
Holvi is designed for groups of users: teams, associations, events, and clubs. Accounts support multiple users and offer features similar to a small business bank account. Users can send invoices, accept payments in an online store environment, and track budgets. The move to crowdfunding is a natural fit for Holvi.
Mesenaatti, meanwhile, is similar to services like Kickstarter. Mesenaatti is Finland’s first public crowdfunding site. Users create projects and present them via video, graphics, and text, and then, with any luck, the funds start rolling in. Patrons can invest as little as 10 euros in projects they find worthy.
Holvi launched in 2011.
NOTE: This story has been updated to note that Holvi is not a bank.
Thanks for the great brief on Holvi and for making that correction around the bank. To clarify: the term ‘bank’ in finance means a specific type of institution with a specific style of doing business. They take deposits, that they invest onwards (ie. carry risk). This model is actually a mismatch, in a business sense, for many day-to-day banking needs, including individual, project and free agent style use. Holvi replaces the need for a bank for our customers. We hold customer funds, make payments in and out (yes, including to other bank accounts), but our business model is different from a bank, and we are regulated differently. We do not take customer funds and invest them — we focus on managing them.
I’m happy to talk more about this to anyone interested. It’s a brave new world, and a new regulation that makes this possible.
Thanks for the comment, Kristoffer! It’s a brave new world indeed. Please stay in touch, as we’d love to hear more of your thoughts about the environment we’re all operating in now.