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Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast
Get to know the brightest and boldest names in European tech with Sifted’s weekly podcast, hosted by Amy Lewin. She interviews the founders, operators and investors building Europe’s most exciting startups and, in conversation with Sifted’s expert journalists, pulls back the curtain on the most intriguing companies they’ve been reporting on.
Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast
Tackling financial fraud with AI: Qonto CEO Alexandre Prot
French fintech Qonto is a rare beast in startup land: it's actually profitable. Founded in 2016, the company provides banking and other financial services to 500,000 small businesses customers across eight European markets, helping them do everything from banking to accountancy, lending, savings, and as of recently, payment terminals.
And being in the black gives it plenty of opportunities to expand further, via new product development, acquisitions — and by becoming a fully-licensed bank.
In this episode of the Sifted podcast, CEO Alexandre Prot joins Amy to talk about how soon Qonto might apply for a banking licence, how it's using AI to tackle fraud and what lies ahead on the path to an IPO.
Key moments:
02:30 Acquisition strategy
14:05 Becoming a ban
19:24 Secondaries and fundraising plans
22:57 IPO?
25:37 Challenges ahead
28:14 Fraud and AI
35:45 What Alex would do differently building Qonto again