TransferWise founder Taavet Hinrikus invests in fintech chatbot Cleo
Summary
Cleo , the London-based fintech that offers an AI-powered chatbot as a replacement for your banking apps, continues to put together an impressive list of backers.In a call with Hinrikus last week, he explained that the investment came about after he kept hearing of Cleo and its co-founder and CEO Barney Hussey-Yeo from various contacts in the London startup scene.The Facebook Messenger chatbot gives insights into your spending across multiple accounts and credit cards, broken down by transaction, category or merchant.One interesting aspect to Cleo’s global ambitions is the potential speed the U.K. startup can move at because of the decision not to become a bank in its own right, which would otherwise bring significant capital and regulatory friction.Meanwhile, although Cleo has begun to experiment with monetisation, including earning affiliate revenue when persuading users to switch gas and electricity providers, the startup’s latest investor describes those efforts as “peanuts” and says it is barely scratching the surface of what’s possible.