Marius Galdikas, ConnectPay CEO: “You’ll get a team that hears your needs and sprinkles out-of-the-box creativity on them. It’s how we innovate, build new concepts, and make ConnectPay better every day”

ConnectPay enables platforms and marketplaces to smoothly get into the game of offering financial services to their customers. Through ConnectPay, clients can utilize Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS). Typically, developing digital banking software from scratch requires immense resources and licenses, however, with BaaS, a company can operate as if granted all the required tools to provide financial services. Usually, technology companies need to work with several providers to service their operational needs, but juggling multiple partners can be tiring and cost-inefficient - ConnectPay aims to enable them to streamline new offerings and scale up services using a single technological solution. Also, by utilizing ConnectPay’s solutions, companies can expedite new fintech launches from a matter of years to a matter of days, also saving millions in getting the EMI license and keeping the business running safely and compliant.

Remaining compliant remains a challenge for established and new fintechs alike. However, having an in-house compliance team or outsourcing compliance duties to a third-party is cost-intensive, both investment and time wise. Knowing compliance intricacies well, ConnectPay offers to take these pressures off its clients’ plate by offering embedded compliance. This means that all of the compliance tools, KYC, transaction monitoring, and regulatory reporting processes are already embedded in ConnectPay’s offering.

In conversation with Marius Galdikas, CEO of ConnectPay

Q. What was the motivation behind starting ConnectPay?

I joined the company in 2018 and it was, and continues to be, a thrilling ride. At ConnectPay, we are united in our goal to help our clients tackle their day-to-day challenges. This has shaped our vision of building a robust financial services platform that reflects the needs of today’s innovators and provides them with all the tools necessary to launch and scale financial offerings. We’ve always had a client-first mentality, and it is the growth and successes of our clients that have enabled ConnectPay to continue growing as well.

Q. How do you optimize and update your solutions regularly? How do you gather insights from clients or their consumers?

We communicate with our existing and potential customers daily, delving deep into what makes their businesses ‘tick’. This helps to understand not only what solutions they need now, but to evaluate what tools would best support their growth in the future. Usually, a company tends to focus mainly on its current pain point – as this consumes a lot of attention, it may be hard to think about a few steps ahead as well. When working with a client, we try to see the overall picture and offer a holistic solution that would address not only the short-term challenges but also set up for a successful long run.

Continuous conversations with our clients help us gain key insights, which are later reflected in how we refine our product suite. Also, we don’t try to chase market trends, rather our clients are the trendsetters – with their input, we can gain first-hand knowledge about what the industry players need right now and react accordingly.

Q. What are the latest technologies leveraged by you to provide exceptional financial services?

It is important to keep in mind that the ‘latest’ does not necessarily equal ‘the best’ technologies. For instance, ConnectPay, as an Electronic Money Institution, prioritizes stability and reliability in its technological choices, utilizing well-established solutions. These technologies are tried-and-tested and have proven to be highly dependable and effective for handling complex financial operations. That said, we always keep our eyes open for new solutions we could utilize to refine our processes.

Q. How do you streamline your services without compromising with data security?

The importance of sound tech safeguards in place cannot be overstated, and upping security should be a regular practice for every company, especially given the fact of how fast the technology landscape – and cyber threats – are evolving. Data security is of utmost importance at ConnectPay, and we continuously strive to adhere to the highest security standards in all value chains as well as uphold internationally recognized security certifications.

Q. What are the factors that affect the pricing of your solutions?

The price depends on several different factors, including the company’s size, business model, business risks, etc., so it differs on a case-by-case basis. We can present an offer only after evaluating which solutions a client actually needs and what would bring them the most tangible value.

Q. What would you say are the top three skills needed to be a successful leader?

The turbulence in the market over the past few years has made very clear the importance of keeping an open mind. No one can see every challenge coming, so it is necessary to be prepared to meet difficult problems with a flexible outlook and creative solutions. A key part of being open-minded is being a careful and attentive listener. Listening is at the foundation of every good relationship, and there is nothing better for ensuring a company’s strength and longevity than building positive relationships, internally and with partners. Finally, it’s important to enable those around you and provide them with the resources and encouragement they need to meet and exceed their potential.

Q. About adaptability, how do you stay relevant to the people’s interests and needs in this highly volatile market?

Our primary point of contact is our clients. Listening to their needs and adapting accordingly helps us stay relevant, not just to their interests but to the interests of the market in general. We also stay in touch with the market side of things more directly by participating in events and closely following industry news. Also, when communicating with existing and potential clients, we always strive to maintain a can-do attitude and stay true to our strategic vision.

Q. Do you have any new services ready to be launched?

Our latest offering is an end-to-end solution to enable clients to launch new financial services, even a neobank, quickly and cost-effectively. Through the combination of our back-end solutions with front-end banking software from our partner Velmie, clients will be able to streamline and scale up their digital services at lower cost and on a much shorter timeline. This all comes with the benefit of having compliance already built into ConnectPay’s offerings, meaning clients are always in line with regulations.

Q. What does the future hold for your company and its customers? Are exciting things on the way?

Our goal, as always, is to help our clients achieve their goals, so we are always developing new solutions to help achieve that end. The importance of embedded finance and compliance for online businesses is clear, and the potential of open banking is just beginning to be realized, so we are looking forward to and will continue to address our customers’ needs with even better, more convenient, and more finely tailored financial solutions.

CEO Marius Galdikas’ ConnectPay Journey

Since I joined the company, ConnectPay has become one of the fastest growing EMIs in Lithuania, as a result of both our market fit and our clients’ trust. Helping to steer the company through difficult times has made clear what it means to be an effective leader in this sector and in this economy. I am pleased to say that I have been successful in bringing to fruition the vision I had for ConnectPay when I joined, and I am certain that, through the resilience of our teams and partners, we will continue to make our visions a reality.

“There’s beauty in simplicity. We think that genius lies in simply explaining complex concepts – you won’t find technical banking terms or phrases.”