Earlier this year when Raghunandan G decided to launch Zolve as of February, it had expected no more than 40,000 registrations.

Zolve has set itself the goal of making banking and financial systems borderless, allowing anyone traveling around the world to obtain credit at market rates, not at a premium. Now, Zolve has deposits of $ 1.5 million in his bank accounts. There have been people deposit $ 40,000, the claims of the global neobanks based in Bangalore and San Francisco.

On Wednesday, the startup launched unique financial products, which will offer American immigrants around the world the opportunity to obtain a FDIC Insured U.S. Bank Account, Credit Card, and Debit Card at the entrance of the country – all without a social security number – in partnership with Federal Community Savings Bank (CFSB).

The new product line

“We are one of the fastest neobanks to gain a foothold in the US markets. We got online in five to six months, on top of that the response we got is pretty big. We wanted to reach 500 customers to make a product-to-market adjustment, but we have 42,000 users. And the management of the scale required a bigger push, ”said Raghu, in conversation with Your story.

Zolves products include:

• Zolve credit card (powered by Mastercard): A high limit unsecured credit card with zero percent APR for the first six months, no administration fees and no foreign transaction fees.
• Zolve deposit account: A deposit account, insured by the FDIC up to $ 250,000, with no minimum balance requirement and no social security number required.
• Zolve Banking mobile application: Mobile app on the go integrated with Apple Pay, Google Pay and Venmo, which provides customers with payment alerts, reminders, access to direct deposits, and other financial tools and educational materials for responsible credit building .

Customers can apply online for the products free of charge in less than 10 minutes by providing a valid visa and passport.

Building for the needs of consumers

Zolve had initially considered offering credit cards to Indian migrants based on their Indian credit history.

He adds: “But the client even requested a bank account with debit cards; so we provided both. We always thought that clients would get bank accounts at their universities or with their employers, but this presents challenges. While we had assumed that people would only deposit their expenses into bank accounts, the behavior showed that educational loans were deposited into the accounts as well. ”

Right now, the team is looking to create an integrated money transfer product. Since Zolve clients are used to UK-based remittances based in India, different from the US, the team is building something similar to the UK remittance system.

“It takes two to three days to transfer money to the United States, whereas in India, within the country, it is immediate. It’s something we take for granted, so we make these products as well, ”says Raghu.

Why Zolve?

While Raghu may be restarting after six years, he has remained busy in the Indian startup ecosystem. After Ola’s acquisition of TaxiForSure in 2015 for $ 200 million, Raghunandan became an investor and mentor in several startups, including Bounce, Ninjacart and Vedantu.

During this time, Raghunandan met people from all over the world, which gave him the idea of ​​Zolve. While traveling outside of India, Raghu noticed that friends and colleagues traveled with him using their debit cards for payments, as many did not use credit cards.

Although being senior executives, these people had credit in India. However, their credit rating abroad did not make them worthy of owning credit services at market rates, and they would end up paying more.

In an increasingly digital world, the neobank has created waves in the fintech sector. Global startups such as Brazil-based Nubank and Berlin-based N26 are valued at $ 10 billion and $ 14.5 billion, respectively. There’s also US-based Chime valued at $ 14.5 billion.

Closer to us, there are startups like Finnin, FamPay and Zeta from Bhavin Turakhia. New unicorn fintech Razorpay, also, has a vertical neobank.

Thanks to Zolve, an individual can open a bank account in India. They can continue to function and access the same account while traveling abroad.

Future plans

“Our vision with Zolve is to make banking and financial systems borderless,” says Raghu.

Today, a consumer works without borders, can access work and trade from different parts of the world, and financial systems are still tight, he adds.

In order to ensure that cross-border financial transactions are transparent and different, Zolve also offers a range of interesting features that can be used by any consumer in any part of the world.

This will soon include buying stocks or investing in the NASDAQ stock markets and other exchanges.