Dr. Fatemeh Nikayin, Co-Founder, Rivero
Today's FinTech Profile is Fatemeh Nikayin, PhD, Co-Founder of payments operations specialist Rivero.
Over to you Dr. Fatemeh:
Who are you and what's your background?
My name is Fatemeh Nikayin, and I am the co-founder of Rivero. After completing my PhD and serving as a researcher and lecturer at Delft University of Technology, I transitioned from academia to work on industry challenges. I started my career in payments in 2014 as an advisor, working at banks and issuers across Europe on various payment topics and projects. After gaining experience and insights into the opportunities and challenges within the payment domain field, I co-founded Rivero with Thomas Müller to solve some of the challenges we've faced throughout our careers.
What is your job title and what are your general responsibilities?
I am a co-founder of Rivero and I oversee the growth domain (sales, marketing & partnership).
Can you give us an overview of your business?
Rivero is a fast-growing Fintech that specialises in modernising and streamlining payment operations for banks. We have two products live with several banks and card issuers across Europe:
Our first product, Kajo, is the only solution on the market for card scheme compliance. It empowers banks to manage the process of compliance with payment networks, spread payment knowledge throughout their organisation and mitigate the risk of non-compliance.
Our second product, Amiko, is the only Software-as-a-service solution that streamlines the entire fraud recovery and dispute processes, helping banks manage this process more efficiently while elevating customer experience. Amiko empowers issuing banks and card issuers to promote consumer protection of card payments to their customers without being concerned with increasing volume of disputes or costs.
We focus on staying ahead of technological trends, which allows us to constantly evolve our products and keep our clients happy.
Tell us how you are funded?
Rivero was bootstrapped with founders and a few angel investors and we managed to reach the break-even state mid 2023. In January 2024, we raised $7 million in a Series A round to accelerate our expansion globally. This round was led by 6 Degrees Capital and Inference Partners, with participation from Kraken Ventures, Seed X Liechtenstein, the venture arm of PostFinance, and angel investor and former COO of Adyen, Robert Kraal, along with a long list of payment executives.
What's the origin story? Why did you start the company? To solve what problems?
Thomas Müller and I founded Rivero in 2019 in Zurich, Switzerland, with the main goal of modernising and simplifying payment operations for banks. We spent several years in the payments industry, and were familiar with its challenges and that motivated us to start Rivero.
One of the main challenges of banks is the increasing costs of payment operations, including processes like fraud recovery and dispute management as well as scheme compliance management.
These processes are typically managed manually and with little automation, so they are costly and require increasing resources at banks to maintain the status quo. By providing modern products, we help banks achieve operational excellence and reduce costs in these processes.
Our clients are typically banks or card issuers providing payment cards (Visa/Mastercard) to their consumers.
Who are your target customers? What's your revenue model?
Rivero's target customers are issuing banks and card issuers. Our products come with an annual SaaS fee that is linked to the clients' size and the number of payment networks they want included in our products.
If you had a magic wand, what one thing would you change in the banking and/or FinTech sector?
We don't have a magic wand, but what we try to do at Rivero is to help banks save costs and stay competitive. Nowadays banks support more and more payment methods and payment is becoming a more strategic topic for banks. Therefore, it is a necessity for banks to gain operational excellence in their payment operations to save costs and provide excellent customer experience. This way, banks can protect their bottom lines and gain top-of-wallet position for their payment offerings.
What is your message for the larger players in the Financial Services marketplace?
Protecting the bottom line and maintaining the top-of-wallet position for your cards or other payment offerings requires more than ever operational efficiency and excellence in customer service. Any investment in these domains will bring your business the needed ROI in a short time.
Where do you get your Financial Services/FinTech industry news from?
We try to read all the major global financial publications covering topics around payment, such as Finextra, and The Paypers. We also listen to podcasts, like the 11:FS podcast and others and would love to be on their show!
Can you list 3 people you rate from the FinTech and/or Financial Services sector that we should be following on LinkedIn, and why?
- Matt Jones, PaymentsCulture - Advisor, consultant, and commercial leader in fintech and payments
- Marcel van Oost - Connecting the dots in fintech
- Simon Taylor - Fintech influencer, content leader and entrepreneur
What FinTech services (and/or apps) do you personally use?
Being a Fintech ourselves, we don't use any particular Fintech services but definitely leverage solutions, such as Slack, Hubspot and Google services.
Finally, let's talk about predictions. What trends do you think are going to define the next few years in the FinTech sector?
Answering this question is challenging because we each have our own perspectives. From our standpoint, automation, process efficiency, and customer experience are becoming increasingly relevant, as they form the foundation of a profitable and successful business.
Thank you very much Dr. Fatemeh, I really appreciate you taking the time to participate.
You can connect with Fatemeh Nikayin, PhD on LinkedIn and find out more about Rivero at https://rivero.tech/.