23. Toqio

Founders: Eduardo Martinez and Michael Galvin
Founded: 2019
Website: toqio.co

Why spend years and millions building an app that’s just “okay”? That’s the premise Toqio set out when developing its platform, which aims to make it easy for companies to create and launch their own fully branded banking or finance solutions as an app or on the web.

Toqio’s platform seeks to transform fintech app development. It’s a potential game-changer for banks, fintech startups, and corporations wanting to publish their own apps, but also seeking to save on development costs without compromising on security and cutting-edge features.

Toqio’s founding team previously built Geniac, a SaaS platform that helped small businesses in the UK manage their day-to-day administration activities. After exiting the business, they found themselves being pulled towards fintech. They kept seeing the same problem, and no solution in the market. Regulation has changed and banking-as-a-service provided the plumbing for new solutions. 

Toqio is a potential game-changer for banks, fintech startups, and corporations wanting to publish their own apps.

Using the Toqio Platform means clients can select an out-of-the-box framework, or customise a solution to their heart’s content. There’s no need to delve into any complex coding, unless that’s exactly what you want to do – Toqio offers this flexibility, and still promises to cut down on business overhead costs and crucial lead-to-launch timeframes.

Toqio co-founder Eduardo Martinez envisages the platform as pioneering “the democratisation of fintech worldwide.” By combining fully compliant, renowned BaaS and financial service partners with a simple and easy to use technology environment, Martinez argues that Toqio is “poised to do for fintech what WordPress did for CMS or Salesforce did for CRM.”

Eduardo Martinez envisages the platform as pioneering “the democratisation of fintech worldwide.

Even after an app has been launched through Toqio, the platform offers further value for users. The Toqio Marketplace and Development Hub provide simple ways to incorporate curated fintech modules offered by leading financial service providers.

Following a UK launch in 2020, Toqio formally launched in Spain the following year, and acquired its first two customers in the US in December 2021. In less than two years, Toqio has secured more than 50 clients that have built numerous financial solutions throughout Europe, and has grown the business internally from 17 people to over 100. It’s recently closed a $20m funding round, and has big ambitions for future growth.