Stiven Muccioli is from San Marino and has lived in various parts of the world, has created two start-ups that have since grown and still operate, and is now on his third entrepreneurial venture in the fintech sphere called BKN301, fintech that raised a EUR 21.5 million round last April.
“BKN is the abbreviation for bank while 301 is the year San Marino was founded,” he tells Startupbusiness. “The startup was born in March 2021from the idea of providing the banking world with a new way of developing technology for banks, an idea that also stemmed from my experience with previous start-ups, to which I added two elements: to make such a product I needed a playing field, I needed to test it and so I did the pilot in San Marino by buying an operator that managed credit cards, POS, payments and we used it to test the software and then we chose alternative markets so as not to clash directly with the software giants, so we started in Egypt where we won the first order and then we became specialised in emerging markets in the Emea area such as Egypt and also Qatar where we have an office in the capital Doha. Then some of our investors introduced us to customers in Italy, so we are now also present in the Italian market where our main customer is Hype of Banca Sella’.
The start-up, which has raised a total of more than EUR 40 million over the years, is also working with clients in Slovenia, Austria and Great Britain. In addition to the Doha office, it has offices in London, Milan and San Marino, where a total of around 140 people are employed.
“We ended 2024 with a turnover of 18 million euro and aim to reach 30 million euro in 2025 with eight million euro Ebitda, remembering that we already broke even last year.
What BKN301’s solution does is to unite the banks’ different technology providers and allow them to develop a selection of components capable of responding in a timely manner to the actual needs and deliver it as-a-service: ‘I call it a kind of WordPress for the banking world because it offers high flexibility and modularity, which translates into significant time and cost savings for financial operators.
The startup is now in the process of further expansion, the founder and CEO anticipates that he is working on new operations but it is still too early to give details as they are in full development, but when they are announced you can read about them here in the Startupbusiness columns, in the meantime what Muccioli (pictured) anticipates is that it is on his company’s agenda: “consolidate our market position in the Mediterranean area, Southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, because we follow the development path with an international vision, also aware of the socio-economic scenarios such as the connection between the migration of populations and the emergence of fintech and innovative banking services, our goal is to become the leading provider in these areas and we want to do this by contributing substantially to the democratisation of banking services’.
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