Varo Money and its focus on the banking — customer relationship

4 min readNov 10, 2016

Varo Money is a US based Fintech startup that provides mobile banking and personal financial management services. We’ve seen mobile banks launching in various forms left right and centre over the last two years; think N26 in Germany, Simple in the US and Monzo in the UK, just to name a few. I’m keen to explore Varo more and learn more about its focus on personal financial management and building an ongoing relationship with its customers.

I listened to a podcast interview with Colin Walsh — CEO and Co-Founder of Varo — recently, in which he outlined as Varo’s core proposition and its main points of differentiation:

Next generation of consumers — In the interview, Colin explains how Varo sees the so-called generation of ‘millennials’ as a white space, currently not addressed well by existing banks. Varo aims to provide these target customers with an easy way to manage their accounts, but also focuses on providing them with financial guidance on how to manage their money.
Mobile first — Given that Varo targets ‘millennials’, Colin made a point of explaining that Varo’s customer experience needs to be intuitive and mobile first, since this has become the standard for millennial users. He describes this mobile first approach as a key differentiator for Varo, along with “delivering meaningful insights to customers.”
Relationship focus — Varo is all about “earning the relationship with the customer.” This means gathering customer data so that Varo can advise customers better and deepening the relationship with the customer by addressing their needs. This doesn’t make Varo any different to any other banks in my opinion, but it will be interesting to see how Varo will design an experience tailored to the needs of its customers. I liked Colin’s point about using data to enhance customer relationships, and I wonder how Varo will build this ‘customer understanding’ into its experience.
Goal-based — Similar to Qapital, Varo is all about helping its customers reach certain financial goals and outcomes. For example, if you want to save money for a big expenditure, Varo is looking to create an experience which will make it easier to set related goals and manage your money accordingly (see Fig. 1 below). I like how Varo enables users to have a single view of their money across a number of accounts (Fig. 2 below).
Underpinned by partnerships — Like many Fintech startups, Varo partners with a number of established third parties to provide the components of their platform. Varo is partnering with companies like Galileo (payment processing) and Socure (identity verification) who, as Colin explains, “things they do very well at scale” and will help with Varo’s speed to market. Varo configures these existing technologies in order to not have the reinvent the wheel. Instead, Varo wants to focus its efforts more on a human-centered approach to design and experience, providing customers with insights to help deepening relationships with them (see Fig. 3 and 4 below).

Main learning point: For a company that hasn’t even yet released its product into Beta, Varo has done a good job in creating a buzz around its proposition and its services. With so many new banking platforms popping up, it will be interesting to see how Varo will differentiate itself and establishes a critical mass of US customers and, as Colin says will become “a credible alternative to a traditional bank account.”

Fig. 1 — Screenshot of Varo’s goal-setting functionality — Taken from: http://www.varomoney.com/whatisvaro.php#2

Fig. 2 — Screenshot of Varo’s ability to provide a single view of all their accounts — Taken from: http://www.varomoney.com/whatisvaro.php#2

Fig. 2 — Screenshot of Varo’s card functionality — Taken from: http://www.varomoney.com/whatisvaro.php#2

Fig. 4 — Screenshot of “V”, providing insights to customers — Taken from: http://www.varomoney.com/whatisvaro.php#3

Related links for further learning:

Varo Money and its focus on the banking — customer relationship

Written by MAA1