Dyme gives its users complete control over their financial situation. The Dyme application provides insight into users’ spending and subscriptions, and lets users cancel, negotiate, or switch any cont

Project Information

Dyme

Grant agreement ID: 883614

DOI

10.3030/883614

Project closed

EC signature date 15 November 2019

Start date 1 November 2019

End date 30 April 2020

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

DYME BV
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Dyme (Dyme gives its users complete control over their financial situation. The Dyme application provides insight into users’ spending and subscriptions, and lets users cancel, negotiate, or switch any cont)

Reporting period: 2019-11-01 to 2020-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Based on the European challenges addressed by Dyme’s innovation, the following four objectives have been formulated.

1 Decrease household debt for all Europeans.

Dyme’s aim is to give people complete control over their financial situations. Almost half of all Europeans younger than 65 years feel like they are living from paycheck to paycheck, with utility bills being one of the main areas of financial difficulty for European households. Dyme provides exactly this vulnerable group of Europeans the means to improve their situation. By providing a clear overview of all recurring expenses and enabling users to save with a single click, Dyme enables users to save up to €980.00 per year. These extra euros can be saved, invested or used to pay-off debts. Ultimately this will lead to less late payments on utility bills, less late-fees for deferred payments and an increased overall financial position for all Europeans that use Dyme.

2. Increase financial wellbeing for young Europeans

One of Dyme’s key objectives is to increase the financial wellbeing of young Europeans. This group has an increasing amount of debt and struggles to manage spending behaviour. One of the primary reasons young people get into financial problems is the lack of personal financial administration. According to one study conducted by the Dutch research institute Nibud, those in the age group 18-35 who did not track their own personal finances were twice as likely to have payment delays than those who did. Dyme makes financial tracking and administration accessible to all Europeans; providing a clear overview of income and expenses, as well as the ability to set budgets and notifications for income and expenses. In turn this enables Dyme’s users to increase their financial wellbeing in an open and accessible way.

3. Democratise financial opportunities

Dyme estimates that Europeans are missing out on €980.00 of financial opportunities every year. While these opportunities are not difficult to get, it is usually those who are less wealthy or tech-savvy who fail to realise these opportunities exist. The lack of a financial education, failed guidance in managing processes and lack of promotion of these opportunities is ultimately what causes this gap. To bridge this, Dyme provides all of its users with the same financial opportunities in a one-click experience. This enables underrepresented groups to achieve the same financial prosperity as others, ultimately reducing the European wealth gap.

4. Reach the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy

109 million Europeans are currently at risk of poverty and social exclusion. While inclusive growth of the economy was set as a goal in the Europe 2020 strategy in 2010, this number has failed to be reduced to the goal of 96.2 million. Dyme decreases household’s debt, protects and educates young spenders and democratises financial opportunities throughout Europe. Fulfilling these objectives ultimately leads to more prosperous and financially secured Europeans, meaning that Dyme contributes towards the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Technical viability on a European level has been assessed through:

On the 14th of September 2019 all banks opened up their API’s to the companies with a license from De Nederlandsche Bank. This allowed Dyme to get connected and start validating its innovation in a relevant live environment, meaning the company and subscription detection algorithms, recommender system and one click switching functionalities were all practically and technologically validated. Following the technical validation in a laboratory and relevant environment, Dyme is currently demonstrating its technology in a relevant environment to a relevant group of consumers. Utilising Dyme’s PSD2 license, Dyme’s first group of relevant consumers are ING, ABN and Rabobank customers in the Netherlands. This technological demonstration has lasted for approximately four months, until March 2020. By then, Dyme developed, validated and demonstrated the aforementioned technological innovations in a relevant environment.

The economic viability on the European level has been validated through the following activities:

- Positive user tests in 6 European countries. Testing of customer demand in the target countries. This is tested by measuring the customer acquisition costs within the test user population.
- Successful testing of the matching accuracy of the algorithms with training dataset.
- Higher than expected of willingness to share financial data with third party applications. This is tested by measuring the bank connections rates within the test user population.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Dyme has seized upon a unique opportunity in the current financial landscape with the app resolving a significant and widespread problem for many Europeans. Inherent to this opportunity however is a high potential for either success or failure, particularly considering Dyme has created an entirely new market. This factor therefore increases the risk of low and slow adoption rates - a risk made even higher due to the app requiring significant trust from users.

Despite this risk, all research and market experiments indicate that Europeans are ready for Dyme’s innovation, and the existence of Dyme’s honest and transparent business model makes users far more likely to place trust in the app. Unlike all other financial institutions, Dyme makes money when customers save money. This allows for a legitimate trust relationship to be built with users as Dyme always acts in their best interests. Not only does this factor give Dyme a higher chance of success in general, but a higher chance of success with consumers such as low-income families and young people who are traditionally wary of financial providers (banks, payment institutions and web-based advisors).

While the above factors do put Dyme’s novel innovation at risk of failure, there is clearly a great potential for success as well. Consumers across Europe are increasingly facing financial problems, while the opportunity to solve these problems has recently been made possible through the alignment of three key factors; new legislation, changes in behaviour, and technological advancements.

Legislation: Dyme utilises the new Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) that took effect in September 2019. This directive enables European consumers to grant third-party services access to their banking data, presenting an extraordinary opportunity to rethink financial services. Dyme was the fifth company in the Netherlands to be granted this license from the Dutch Central Bank, thus enabling them to process consumer transaction data in all EU member states.

Behavioral change: The number of consumers willing to share their financial data is rapidly increasing, with 61% of Europeans currently fitting this demographic. As recurring expenses take over an increasing portion of consumers’ budgets and financial problems rise among all European demographics, the 183 million Europeans included in Dyme’s market is only expected to grow.

Technology: Recent improvements in artificial intelligence and machine learning have made Dyme’s achievements possible without extensive and costly manual labour. Advances in cloud computing and data science have also meant Dyme can train models to give automated financial advice. This leads to a solution that outperforms all currently existing alternatives.

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