SMEs banking in EU with Deniz Güven (Episode 47)
In this episode, I sit down with Deniz Güven, CEO of Wamo.
Guests
Show notes
In this episode, I sit down with Deniz Güven, CEO of Wamo.
Deniz Güven is a senior fintech and digital banking executive with extensive experience building financial services across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. He is currently Group CEO and Chair of the Board at wamo, and has held leadership and board roles at AKTech, Platform XIT, Colendi, Trust Bank, and Beşiktaş JK.
Previously, Deniz served as CEO of Mox Bank in Hong Kong, the virtual bank backed by Standard Chartered, and held senior digital leadership roles at Standard Chartered and Garanti BBVA. His career spans digital banking, fintech ventures, product innovation, and alternative revenue streams. Deniz has also mentored fintech start ups through Garanti Partners and brings a global perspective on how digital platforms are reshaping financial services.
With him, we will talk about SMEs banking in Europe, but also about his incredible careers in banking across APAC and MENA, and the future of banking.
In this episode
Deniz Güven, who built Mox Bank for Standard Chartered in Hong Kong and now leads Wamo, explains how he convinced the bank to design a new operating model rather than just a digital bank, and how joint-venture partners helped Mox grow fast. He describes Wamo's growth with European SMEs, especially in Italy, why SMEs need an operating layer rather than more fragmented tools, and why Wamo aims to be AI-native. He also shares where he sees investment opportunities and how Wamo raised its latest round.
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and Deniz's background
- 2:13Building Mox Bank from scratch
- 7:32Getting a licence and joint-venture partners
- 14:40Investing in fintech
- 16:08Where it is easiest to invest
- 20:03Joining Wamo
- 23:32Wamo's growth
- 26:35Serving Italian SMEs
- 29:27Why SMEs need an operating layer
- 35:46AI-native, not AI-decorated
- 39:35Raising Wamo's Series A
- 43:45Where Deniz would invest now
- 48:21Advice for founders
Key facts
Deniz started in banking in Istanbul and worked at HSBC and for more than ten years at Garanti BBVA, where he helped launch a digital bank in Turkey in 2012.
As a global head at Standard Chartered covering 32 markets, Deniz moved to Hong Kong in 2018 to build Mox Bank from scratch.
Mox obtained its Hong Kong banking licence in about a year.
Before launch, Mox sold 34.9% to joint-venture partners PCCW and Trip.com at a $210 million valuation, with no customers yet.
The same model was taken to Singapore to launch Trust Bank with FairPrice as a partner; Mox and Trust are now both profitable.
Wamo has more than 20,000 business customers in Europe, half of them in Italy, and is growing customers and revenue by double digits month on month.
Wamo expects to break even in the third quarter and to exceed 50 million euros in annual recurring revenue in 2027.
Wamo obtained its own licence in Finland after a 2023 incident at a partner and has opened an office in Bologna with 16 Italian-speaking staff.
Wamo raised a 10 million euro round led by Finland's 3TS.
Deniz joined Wamo as group CEO and chair early this year after investing in it through a fund.
About 400,000 new companies were set up in Italy last year, most of them micro businesses.
SMEs' real problem is fragmentation across several banks and unconnected tools, so they need an operating layer, not just an account.
Traditional banks fail SMEs by treating them with the retail playbook.
Borderless wealth platforms and global transaction banking for multinationals are big untapped opportunities, and embedded finance has only just started.
Questions and answers
How did Deniz pitch Mox to Standard Chartered?
Not as a digital bank, but as the bank's future operating model that could defend against and attack new players.
What does AI-native mean at Wamo?
Using financial and behavioural data to understand each business's cluster and personalise the service to it.
What is Deniz's advice to founders?
Understand commerce deeply and keep adapting; success is when customers run their business on your platform.