Menny Shalom is CEO of Wayerz.
What are the core challenges in transferring money between financial institutions?
Today using the banking system to wire money is almost unrealistic – as it represents the old-banking world – very expensive service for very poor service. Both parties (the sender and the receiver) don’t know when the wire will complete, what would be the total cost and how it is going to be divided between them. The “surprising†part is that even the banks involved – the sender’s bank and the receiver’s – don’t know that.
Photo credit: brizzle born and bred / VisualHunt.com / CC BY-ND
Further, the banks today send the money between them in random paths. They just move the money to the next bank – hoping it will find the beneficiary – while they are somewhat indifferent as to the cost, time and risks associated with the executed route. We believe that could and should be different.
How does Wayerz solve or fix these problems? Does the crowd play a role?
Wayerz provides a GPS-like solution that calculates the optimal route for each and every wire, in real time. Optimal could mean the cheapest route, the fastest route, the least riskier route and so on. On top of the ability to provide those routes we allow every bank to determine what is optimal for it — based on its policies, internal considerations and commercial preferences. We are enterprise software, optimizing the benefits for our clients (the banks) so the general crowd is being “counted† through the banks’ interests. We do however monitor the routes and get statistical insights as to the global payment map.
Where did you come up with the idea for Wayerz?
Reality is always the best motivation for innovation. I was approached by a bank who asked me to source similar software for them. I then approached 25 banks worldwide and asked what software they use. They all gave me the same 2 answers: (a) we don’t have it and (b) if you create it, we’ll be happy to buy it from you.
