Waspit.Me Shows You What Banking 2.0 Looks Like

Following startups from the early beginnings can be exciting. Also, it can be extremely stressful. However, isn’t that the case with everything that you build up from scratch?  To paraphrase one quote that I personally read on a friend’s social network wall, here’s the deal with startups: it’s supposed to be hard, you’re doing if the hard work of building a company now and figuring things out, every crack you make is and you need to fix it, you are fighting for your life. There is no greater feeling than when your startup is (almost) ready to go out and venture into general population. And it seems that Waspit.Me is getting ready to spread its wings and fly.

Banking? Waspit!

So, what exactly is Waspit.Me? It is an interactive social banking mobile payment system. This may seem as a wibbly-wobbly territory, but it is nevertheless growing and in need of a unifying paying method. That is exactly what Waspit.Me is trying to be. They are not trying to be the next great banking app, but instead they are trying to deliver a positive user experience by combining banking and day-to-day commerce.

What many of today’s financial apps and other solutions are lacking is a wider array of usability. Very often they are very solution-specific you will find yourself needing different solutions in your daily commercial activities. The idea behind Waspit.Me is  to be available to the consumers whenever and wherever they could possibly want. It does not matter if it is shopping, social or online gaming, sending or receiving money from family and friends, paying for drinks in a bar, or paying a cabbie . It doesn’t even matter if you are a business or a customer, or if you want to make big or small transactions- Waspit.Me aims to cover all those domains.

Users and Options

Although targeted demographic is anyone who is doing any kind of transactions, in it’s current development stage, most engaged are students and young adults. These generations are using todays mobile technology seamlessly, without making distinctions between the virtual and real world. So, in a world where banking is almost the same as it was when it started, Waspit can be called “banking 2.0”, a prepaid debit account that you can load money on from any other traditional account.

There are no sign-up fees, which is always a plus when it comes to finances. You can choose what options to use, how involved you would like to be and who to follow. You can use split-the-bill, peer-to-peer, Bill Pay payments and ACH and it will work with most ATM withdrawals. As a noncredit card company, you cannot acquire debt, but you can earn “Buzz Points”, Waspit’s currency, by social and financial interactions.

Engage With This Startup

Clearly, Waspit.Me is a startup, so some of the features are still to be unveiled. However, the good news is that the wait is almost over. They will present end-user solutions to over 350,000 customers bythe Summer of 2014. The industry got a sneak-peek preview of this PaaS (platform as a service) on Money2020 in November 2013, and the launch of Waspit.Me is expected in July 2014. Until then, the team is working with banks and financial institutions who want a better customer engagement and experience.

In conclusion, Waspit.me is an interesting concept, and a model that could be the future of mobile banking and finances. Its accent on user experience, social interaction (without becoming a social network) and wide array of payment methods is the future of interactive banking and Waspit.Me grasped this concept pretty well. For now, if you are not interested, wait and see, but don’t say that you haven’t been warned!