Launched in Italy in 2021 and in Luxembourg in early 2022, Mopso is a regtech startup currently participating in the Fit 4 Start programme. We met Andrea Danielli, founder and CEO, to learn more about his innovative project.
What kind of startup is Mopso and what problem does it solve?
Mopso is a regtech startup working inside the compliance domain. Our solution is all about AML, which means our customers are in the financial services industry but also in insurance and real estate. Everyone who needs AML processes basically.
The first step in AML is knowing your customer. This is where our solution Amlet, Mopso’s flagship B2B product, comes in. It helps acquire all the data about the customer in just a few seconds because we rely on the forthcoming European Digital Identity Wallet. By using this wallet, we can issue verifiable credentials and allow customers to make their KYC data portable and reusable for any institution that asks for their data. This translates into great time and cost savings and it is possible because we are working with a European accelerator called eSSIF-LAB.
Our other solution is called Brain and it is used for transaction monitoring and ongoing customer due diligence, meaning we help financial institutions to monitor customer behaviour. Suspicious activity triggers an alert which leads us to investigate this behaviour.
Why is now the right moment to implement your solution?
By relying on the European Digital Identity Wallet, we are building an interoperable solution and avoiding any potential lock-in effects. What we’re facing right now is that every financial institution has stopped investing in new customer relations processes and that the IT legacy is a real pain point for them. Financial institutions are fearful of integrating new services or starting new projects. That’s why we are proposing a very efficient way to implement our solution.
What we are proposing is to create an ecosystem which will be interoperable with other banks. What we have done in Italy so far is to be part of a consortium of different tech providers where everyone supplies one aspect of the solution. We want to start doing the same in Luxembourg. In Italy, we have already approached 20 different payment institutions and are hoping to convince at least five or six to start a pilot programme with us. By anonymising the data of the customer and working together with banks, they will realise that they are not risking anything and that a lot of time can be saved with our solution.
You moved from Italy to Luxembourg in early 2022. Why?
First of all, we were selected for Fit4Start, which was a great opportunity to learn more about the Luxembourgish market and grow our startup. We also had a meeting with a representative of the ministry of digital transformation and were impressed by the open-mindedness of everyone there. When we had a call with the CSFF, and realised they were extremely open and effective, we knew this was the right place to be for us.
We also started working with the Supercomputer MeluXina at Fit4Start and the results have been astounding. The approach at Fit4Start has also been super supportive and you can tell they really want us to be successful. So, if we eventually manage to get funding and find customers in Luxembourg we would be more than happy to stay here.
Is there anything Luxembourgish regulators can do to make startups’ lives easier?
Honestly, from our perspective at least, no. I think the best way for regulators to do their work is to allow entrepreneurs to try out different things and not be too involved in evaluating innovation. Not every startup can afford expensive lawyers, so regulators shouldn’t make it too hard for startups to experiment.
What’s next for Mopso?
We’d like to have one paying customer in Luxembourg. As for the Italian market, we would like to close the consortium we are currently building there. If we achieve this, it could help us be between the first in Europe to start testing self-sovereign identity (SSI) and AML all within the same framework.
The cloud integration side of our solution is complete and has already been successfully trialled in Italy – it only took a few hours for everything to be up and running. So now we only have to work on the commercial side of things and get in touch with the right prospects. Other aspects include increasing awareness about digital identities and how they will work together with the wallet to make AML and KYC processes easier.
