Yapital
Founded in 2011 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Otto Group, Yapital launched its new mobile payment service in 2013. Following a one-time registration via smartphone or web browser, Yapital was ready for immediate use. In addition to making payments, consumers could send and receive money within seconds. Yapital was licensed as an Electronic Money Institution in Luxembourg and therefore complied with strict legal and regulatory requirements. Payments with Yapital were transferred in real-time, leading to process reliability and a reduction in administrative costs for business partners. Yapital seamlessly integrated all retail and service channels, converting marketing channels into actual sales channels.
Role: Interim CPO: Product & Customer Services teams in Hamburg, Kiev, and Luxemburg
Context
- The Island Of Stone Money is the name both of a book about Yap, written a century ago, and a 1991 paper by the economist Milton Friedman, who compared Yap’s monetary system to the gold standard.
"Hundreds of years ago, explorers from Yap found limestone deposits on an island hundreds of miles away. And they carved this limestone into huge stone discs, which they brought back across the sea on their small bamboo boats. It's unclear if these stones started as money. But at some point the people on Yap realized what most societies realize. They needed something that everyone agrees you can use to pay for stuff. And like many societies, the people of Yap took the thing they had that was pretty — their version of gold — and decided that was money."
