Bankify Co-Founder Antti Tarakkamäki: A Fintech App for Millennial Financial Education (2018 Interview)

A 2018 conversation, published honestly: Bankify co-founder Antti Tarakkamäki explains — in his own words, at the Euro Finance Tech conference — why he and his co-founders built a financial-goals app aimed at making banking fun, useful, and educational for millennials.

This interview was recorded in 2018, during Startuprad.io's media partnership with Euro Finance Tech. It is not current news about Bankify — it is a primary-source conversation with one of its co-founders about why the company was built and how its product worked at the time. We are republishing the full show notes and transcript here as the canonical page for this episode.

Who is Antti Tarakkamäki

Antti Tarakkamäki is a co-founder of Bankify, a Helsinki-based fintech startup. He is Finnish and founded his first company at age 17 through a Junior Achievement (Young Enterprise) program while still in high school — a six-person team that built a physical product for opening bottles and jars. He went on to complete a master's degree at the Helsinki School of Economics and worked in mergers and acquisitions for large corporations, in Finland and internationally, before returning to entrepreneurship with Bankify.

The founding story: from Junior Achievement to Bankify

Tarakkamäki co-founded Bankify with fellow finance professionals who shared a common frustration: personal finance remained troublesome and difficult to navigate, even in the age of digitalization, and most people lack the education to handle it well. That frustration became the starting point for Bankify, which Tarakkamäki dates to 2016 and connects to Slush, the Helsinki startup conference held every December.

What Bankify does

Bankify built a mobile app to help people — mainly millennials — set and reach financial goals, with features like micro-saving and goal-based saving (the app's example goals reportedly included cars, from a Porsche on down). The company's stated agenda: fun, a better user experience, and financial education, aimed at a generation Tarakkamäki said doesn't want to live on credit but finds saving hard to start and hard to sustain.

Business model: an enhancement layer, not a bank

Bankify is no regulated bank and, according to Tarakkamäki, didn't aim to become one. Instead, it built enhancement features — described in the interview as "micro-services" — that banks and financial institutions could license as a white-label solution or integrate via SDK or API, tied to Europe's open banking push. At the time of the interview, Bankify was looking beyond Europe toward North America and Asia.

Fundraising status at the time of the interview

At the time of filming, Tarakkamäki said Bankify was raising an A round via a convertible note, expected to close by the end of that year, and was open to conversations with potential investors and B2B partners. This is a historical detail from the 2018 conversation, not a claim about Bankify's funding status today — Startuprad.io has not independently verified Bankify's current operating or funding status.

Event context: Euro Finance Tech and Slush

Startuprad.io was a media partner of Euro Finance Tech, the event where this interview was filmed, and used the trip to talk to several startups on-site — this conversation with Tarakkamäki was one of them. During the interview, Tarakkamäki also referenced Slush, the large Helsinki startup and tech conference held every December, as connected to Bankify's founding.

Watch the full 2018 interview

More on FinTech in the DACH region

This 2018 Bankify conversation is one piece of Startuprad.io's broader fintech coverage. For the current state of challenger banks, embedded finance, crypto and CSRD-driven compliance tooling across Germany, Austria and Switzerland, see our FinTech Startups Guide: Germany, Austria & Switzerland.

More from Startuprad.io

This 2018 conversation sits inside Startuprad.io's ongoing coverage of European and international fintech founders. For the full, AI-readable index of our episodes and tools, see the Startuprad.io /llm page.

Startuprad.io reaches founders, operators, and investors across the DACH startup ecosystem and beyond. If your company wants to reach that audience, become a Startuprad.io partner.

About the Host

Joern "Joe" Menninger is the host of the Startuprad.io podcast and covers founders, investors, and policy developments across the DACH startup ecosystem. Through more than 1,300 interviews and nearly a decade of reporting, he documents the evolution of the European startup landscape. Follow Joern on LinkedIn.

Full Transcript (2018 Interview)

This is the complete, lightly cleaned transcript of the original 2018 conversation between Joe Menninger and Antti Tarakkamäki, published verbatim as the canonical record of this episode.

[00:06] Announcer: Welcome to Your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German startup scene with news interviews and live events.

[00:20] Joe: Hello and welcome everybody. This is Joe from your startup podcast and YouTube blog from Germany today. As you may be able to hear from the background am still at your finance tech around us. There’s right now lunch going on, but I still do have Antti here with me. Hey, welcome.

[00:37] Antti: Thank you very much. Nice to meet you. And hello everyone there. Back to screens.

[00:43] Joe: You are one of the co-founders of Bankify. But can you tell us a little bit more about you, what you do, what you did before we get into those details?

[00:55] Antti: Absolutely. Absolutely. I actually started my first company age of 17. Well, I’m very proud of that. In Finland Helsinki.

[01:04] Joe: What did you do?

[01:05] Antti: Yes, it was part of a junior achievement program, so young enterprise. So actually I was still in high school, but yes. And it wasn’t only me, five others, so six of us. We founded actually a physical product helping opening bottles and jars that point of time very handy.

[01:23] Joe: Well, in terms of health and key, I would have thought of something like keeps you warm but also opening bottles totally fine with me. And what did you do then?

[01:35] Antti: At the early stage startup?

[01:36] Joe: Whatever you want to talk about.

[01:43] Antti: Great. I mean that was a great post for the entrepreneurial career for me. And it was still early days, 20 years ago. So I also realized that education is also the key to get forward. So I finished my master degree in Helsinki School of Economics and then worked for large corporations. Not only Finland based but internationally. We were buying and selling companies. That was a great experience, but I didn’t give up for the entrepreneurial spirit. And that’s where I’m doing my dream job right now.

[02:13] Joe: Okay. And you co-founded Bankify. Where are you guys headquartered?

[02:17] Antti: Helsinki.

[02:18] Joe: Helsinki. I heard it’s very nice in the summer and freaking cold in the winter.

[02:22] Antti: Yes. I’m happy to invite you there.

[02:26] Joe: In the summer.

[02:28] Antti: You choose.

[02:29] Joe: That’s fine. When did you set up your company? What was kind of the driver that got you started? And what does it actually do?

[02:39] Antti: Yes. So both me and the co-founder, they’re all finance professionals. So we had really big frustration, especially in the age of digitalization. That’s why finance is such a troublesome and difficult. And most of don’t even have the education, so how to handle it. So this problem we wanted to solve in the field of personal finance management. And that was the kick start for Bankify 2016. and some of you might actually hear about a conference called Slush. That is a creative inspirational event. So we founded a company there.

[03:20] Joe: It’s in Helsinki. It’s during wintertime there. Early December.

[03:25] Antti: Yes. Right. And it’s like 20,000 people gathering together. Tech enthusiastic people, a lot of startups, a lot of investors. It’s actually in the beginning of December this year. So if anyone joining, let’s meet there.

[03:40] Joe: It may be too early this year to go there, but maybe I can include it next year into my travel schedule. So talking about Bankify, what are you guys doing there? I read something about an APP, but that’s on everything, right?

[03:57] Antti: Yes. And as our product is an application, but actually our business concept is slightly more. But first of all, we are solving real-life problems. Especially with the younger segments. So millennials who are becoming more independent in their financial life and we want to make it easy to start with. I mean take the first small steps. So we believe in smart financial choices of today for a better tomorrow. Basically, that’s the vision.

[04:34] Joe: And how do they assist and what’s kind of smart decision? Not to buy a Ferrari now on credit or something.

[04:44] Antti: Yeah. Actually, there are some car goals already in our APP. I don’t remember the first probably Porsche or something.

[04:52] Joe: I didn’t know that before.

[04:55] Antti: So good guessing exactly. I mean you can start as little or as small as you want. And micro saving is one of our actually key features. And it’s a perfect example. How do millennials actually, what is their attitude towards finance? They don’t want to live on credit anymore. I mean, there are already studies about that. They are eager to do the saving. But saving it’s not easy, It’s difficult. Especially how to get started. How to stay motivated. How to continue it over time. It’s not pouring your money to your saving account. I mean, what’s in it for me? I mean you want to have the use case to where you need them money and then typically we’ll also want to spend it.

[05:42] Joe: I see. And that`s everything in Bankify? I only mentioned that a couple of these features. We are also focusing on them on the millennial segment in a way that we want to actually personalize the finance experience. And now we’re talking about the mobile application way of banking. And education is also part of our agenda. And making it also a bit fun and social.

[06:15] Joe: That’s not typically what you relate finance with. I vividly remember when we’ve been hosting like a live stream with a robot advisor, founders of Robot Advisors. One of them said very memorably investing is the opposite of sexy. So how do you do that?

[06:34] Antti: Yes, officially, of course, I don’t want to make finance to 60, but I definitely want to make the experience more joyful for end users. And this is also. We’re actually in this banking conferences where we at now. A lot of these players are still struggling with. I mean they don’t know how to read, how to create experiences to this new generation. The users already have in their social apps, in their game apps. That’s kind of behavioral expectation. Banking apps also should do more interviews, especially if you want to stay relevant for this new generation.

[07:15] Joe: So to talk about it very meaningful. You do banking apps in the style of Facebook.

[07:20] Antti: Yeah, actually we are not a bank or we don’t want to be a bank. A regulated player, but yes, we deliver enhancement solutions. So application features or we call them actually a micro-services to banks and financial institutions. Who can either get them from us white label solution or as an SDK or API integration.

[07:48] Joe: So very simplified you are offering parts. And some of those parts and some of the parts of the bank together will be a new mobile banking app for example.

[08:04] Antti: Yes. Besides the banking, of course still comes from the bank, which is their core business. But our features can be seen as an enhancement which is improving and boosting the user experience. And increasing the engagement or we can also say stickiness to the application. And now it’s in Europe especially. It’s really high on our agenda open banking. So the perfect way for us to deliver is also using these open banking interfaces, API`s as we call them. And it seems to be very interesting for the banking players in Europe. but also Bankify is on a next stage looking to expand to North America, to Asia. And we want to be an international player.

[08:53] Joe: And everybody who would like to learn more can go down here in the show notes and have a look. And we just got into another part. So what are you currently looking for here? For example, on those banking events? What are you looking for? Like corporation Partners, investors, clients, good food.

[09:18] Antti: I liked the German food. It’s similar in Finland. The fish definitely. But we are here to partner and as a standalone application. We wouldn’t enter Germany as we see a way. But B2B makes perfect sense to us and we want to find the local partners to do it. And besides of that, go to market expansive requires a capital. So we are definitely also looking for investments. Our next round is A round. We are launching end of this year, so also happy to talk to anyone interested in investing. But I also think the whole Fintech ecosystem is getting more mature. And we see more banks and Fintech joining forces now. And that’s a great atmosphere. For example, in this event today.

[10:09] Joe: Great. And for everybody who would like to learn more or reach out to you directly, we’ll also have down here to link to your LinkedIn profile.

[10:17] Antti: Very welcome to contact me either through LinkedIn or go to our website, Happy to have a heads up or chats also on your experiences. How to get the impact on he millennial segment through advanced technology and Fintech products.

[10:37] Joe: Thank you very much.

[10:40] Antti: Thank you.

[10:46] Announcer: That’s all folks. Find more news, streams, events and interviews at Remember sharing is caring.

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