Trivium: Bridging the Gap in Banking Services for Use
As teased in our previous article, this week we unveil Trivium, the groundbreaking solution revolutionizing user-facing applications by offering comprehensive banking services. Trivium's innovative approach mirrors traditional Banking-as-a-Service providers in Southeast Asia, yet with a unique twist—extending beyond payments to encompass investments, insurance, and lending. By seamlessly integrating its API into client applications, Trivium ensures a tailored user experience while unlocking new revenue streams and bolstering user retention. Dive deeper into Trivium's journey as we explore its mechanisms, consumer risks, and the challenges faced by its founders; William and Leo, on the road to success.
1. What is the gap Trivium aims to bridge?
Trivium enables any user-facing application to leverage its audience by offering banking services to their customers. Just as traditional Banking-as-a-Service providers (BaaS) in Southeast Asia have built plug-and-play solutions for payments services, such as virtual account creation, bank transfers and card issuance, Trivium aims to do the same with other financial services, like investments, insurance and lending.
The result for Trivium’s customers is increased user retention, as well as the creation of new revenue streams. As for end users (ie, the users of these applications), they benefit from accessing the financial services they want, in the user interface they prefer.
2. How exactly the software/mechanism works
Trivium provides an API for our customers to give their users access to financial services. As such, Trivium doesn’t have a standalone application, and is fully embedded in our customers’ apps. This allows for a seamless user experience, with our customers deciding on their own UX and branding.
3. The risks/perceived risks for consumers
Through Trivium, end users (consumers and businesses) are interacting with financial institutions directly - Trivium is a tech intermediary, not a financial one, and therefore doesn’t hold or disburse any funds.
Because Trivium partners exclusively with entities that are licensed by local regulators, users enjoy the same protections as in their regular interactions with these financial institutions.
4. Some struggles you both faced as startup founders
The most common challenge for startup founders operating in a heavily regulated space such as finance is something akin to the “chicken-and-egg” problem that marketplace products face: regulated entities need to see clear demand before they’re willing to partner with a startup, but it’s harder to get demand without a product to sell. Trivium was no exception.
It took a fair amount of back-and-forth and quite a few “no”s until we were able to get our first product up and running.
5. The breakthrough and how it happened
Not really a breakthrough, but the most important moments are likely the first sale and the first partnership with a financial institution - each subsequent step becomes much easier after that.
6. The current stage of trivium
Trivium is already live, helping business digital wallets enhance their treasury management solutions by offering cash products, such as fixed deposits and money market funds, to their users. At the same time, we’re working towards expanding the range of financial products in our platform, as well as the markets we operate in.
