Episode 18 - Alex Meshev
In this episode, I sit down with Alex Emeshev, Ceo and founder of Vivid Money.
Guests
Show notes
In this episode, I sit down with Alex Emeshev, Ceo and founder of Vivid Money.
Before founding Vivid, Alexander led the digital transformation of several major banks. As Executive Director at Kaspi Bank, he spearheaded business expansion and digital strategy. At Tinkoff Bank, he played a key role in scaling digital products, shaping the future of fintech, setting the foundation for his work with Vivid.
Under his leadership, Vivid evolved from a B2C fintech into a top European business bank, bringing the speed, simplicity, and affordability of retail banking to SMEs. Today, Vivid provides an integrated financial platform with competitive pricing, treasury management, and seamless connectivity between private and business banking. Backed by Greenoaks Capital and DST Global, Vivid is among Germany’s top three business banks, shaping the future of SME banking in Europe.
In this episode
Alex Emeshev, co-founder of Vivid Money, explains how experience at Kaspi.kz and Tinkoff shaped Vivid's product-led culture of small teams shipping weekly. He describes the shift to serving SMEs and startups, how a banking-as-a-service provider's problems pushed Vivid to build its own licences across Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Italy, and why he prefers today's more rational funding market. He predicts SaaS and fintech will merge and that businesses will buy solutions, increasingly through AI agents, rather than banking products.
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and Vivid
- 1:10From Kaspi to Tinkoff Investments
- 3:40Launching Vivid
- 7:11How Vivid builds and ships products
- 13:40Prioritising the roadmap
- 17:40Why Vivid focuses on SMEs
- 22:42Raising in 2021 vs today
- 26:03Leaving banking-as-a-service
- 30:21Getting licensed across Europe
- 36:32Trends: SaaS meets fintech, AI agents
- 47:57How Vivid uses AI today
Key facts
Vivid is a neobank for SMEs and startups, growing in Germany and about five years old.
Alex spent the first six or seven years of Kaspi.kz's growth there, then built Tinkoff Investments from scratch to several million customers.
Kaspi.kz has about 14 million customers in a country of about 20 million people.
Vivid works in product teams of three to seven people, splitting any team that nears ten, runs seven or eight major initiatives in parallel and ships something new every week.
Alex personally handles one to three customer requests a day.
Vivid launched its SME product in beta at the start of 2024 and began marketing it only in May 2024.
When Vivid's banking-as-a-service provider ran into trouble, Vivid, its largest client by customers, paused marketing and moved to its own licences.
Vivid holds an e-money licence in Luxembourg (as a principal Visa member), a MiFID licence in the Netherlands and a crypto licence in Italy moving to MiCA.
Vivid's licences took from five or six months to about 18 months; some were obtained from scratch, others by acquiring companies.
Vivid starts licensing processes six to 12 months before it plans to launch a product.
There are at least 25 million businesses across Europe, and Vivid is preparing to expand beyond Germany.
About 30–40% of Vivid's operations are automated with AI, expected to exceed half within about six months.
Today's rational funding market is healthier than 2021, when too much cash kept weak companies alive.
Fintech and SaaS for businesses will merge, financial services will be commoditised, and customers will buy solutions, often through AI agents, rather than banking products.
Questions and answers
How does Vivid decide what to build?
From constant customer feedback, including founders answering requests, and flexible prioritisation between product teams.
Why focus on SMEs?
Demand proved huge and business banking is far less disrupted than consumer banking.
What did losing a BaaS provider teach Vivid?
To control its own destiny by holding its own licences and technology.