February the 5th, 2022 - The replenishment of the Croatian Aircash wallet via the Paysafe platform is now available in twenty different countries, but ironically NOT here in Croatia, where the Aircash app was created and developed.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Ivan Tominac writes, the Croatian fintech Aircash and the multinational online payment platform Paysafe have concluded a cooperation that allows Aircash wallet users to top up their wallets directly with cash in more than twenty countries across Europe, from Austria to Sweden.

When they want to add cash to their account, Croatian Aircash wallet users choose the "cash" option as a top-up method. This generates a barcode that can be taken to a nearby Paysafecash payment site to fully complete the transaction.

As Udo Müller, the CEO of Paysafe's eCash department, explained, the partnership between the Croatian Aircash application (app) and the Paysafe platform gets to the very heart of the problems faced by very many migrant communities. This approach allows people to digitise their money and transfer it much more easily, which helps them support their families back at home.

“This is especially useful for those who live abroad and who want to send money to friends and family at home. By enabling them to top up their accounts with cash through a reliable solution such as Paysafecash with a wide network of payment points, we make this service more accessible to our customers,'' said Hrvoje Cosic, President of the AirCash Management Board.

Although the Republic of Croatia is currently not among the countries covered by the cooperation, the international Paysafe survey from 2020 shows the state of awareness regarding cash. As many as 50 percent of respondents still believe that cash is the most reliable form of payment in a crisis, and 72 percent said they would be worried if they could not access cash.

For more, check out our dedicated business section.

January the 20th, 2022 - Croatian Post (Hrvatska posta) has apparently been introducing brand new services in order to up its game left, right and centre of late, and yet another new one has been launched. Aircash app payments can now be made in more than 1000 post offices across the country.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Lucija Spiljak writes, from now on, customers can pay for goods and services carried out by Croatian Post in a total of 1,016 post offices with Aircash app payments, ie through the very first Croatian digital wallet which was and continues to be a roaring success on the domestic market.

In addition to following the trends and habits of consumers and customers in order to keep the existing ones and attract new ones, Croatian Post says that they want to strengthen their role of "a leader in the digitalisation of business in Croatia."

“Each of our post offices has a prominent QR code on the counters that the user of the Aircash application should read on his mobile phone when paying for something. You can pay for the retail range digitally in our post offices (except for HAC ENC vouchers, e-vouchers from mobile operators and lottery tickets), for all postal services, Paket24 express delivery services and philatelic products,'' they explained from Croatian Post.

Aircash is otherwise the fastest growing Croatian fintech with more than 200,000 active users based in Croatia alone, and it offers its users the ability to pay for items and withdraw cash through the application. This move in which Aircash app payments will be allowed for a range of Croatian Post's services will certainly appeal to many.

They are also registered with the European Banking Authority (EBA), which is the umbrella regulator and gives them the right to do business across all European Union (EU) member states. In addition to being very much present here in Croatia, they are available in neighbouring Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Spain and Romania, with plans to spread their wings even further across the bloc.

For more, check out our dedicated lifestyle section.

November the 7th, 2021 - The very first Croatian mobile wallet Aircash is now offering its users pre-paid cards. Aircash was a real novelty here on the Croatian market, and it seems they're now set to go a step further.

As Bernard Ivezic/Novac writes, Aircash, the very first Croatian fintech to launch its own mobile wallet, has now become the first domestic startup to issue its own card. The Croatian mobile wallet Aircash presented its partnership with Mastercard in the City of Zagreb on Thursday, and as a result, Aircash now offers a Mastercard card in addition to its mobile application, similar to the cards offered by the British company Revolut and KEKS Pay from Erste Bank.

Hrvoje Cosic, the founder and director of Aircash, says that this made them the first financial player in all of Croatia to issue Mastercard cards without actually being a bank.

''These are prepaid cards that are exclusively related to Aircash wallets and the balance on them, they have no fees, and we don't plan to introduce any monthly subscriptions and thus believe that we have a market and price competitive product,'' said Cosic, adding that they set a precedent here on the Croatian market in terms of distribution. The cards will not be ordered, as they typically are with other applications, but an empty Mastercard card will be purchased at a kiosk, fuel station or store and is then activated through the Aircash application by scanning the QR code.

''Thanks to that, the card becomes active immediately, it's then connected to the funds available to the user in their Aircash wallet and it can be used to pay for things anywhere in the world,'' explained Cosic, adding that the card can be managed within the Aircash application. This means monitoring and controlling consumption, setting a limit and all this is instantly applied.

Two years ago, this Croatian startup received an EU license for electronic money from the CNB and thus offered its mobile wallet services. It then contracted cooperation with a number of retailers from the Croatian Lottery through HAC to Telecom. Since the beginning of the year, the Croatian mobile wallet Aircash has increased the number of users in Croatia by 70 percent to more than 200,000. In total, it is closer to the number of a quarter of a million users, because it also has many users in Slovenia and Austria.

For more, check out Made in Croatia.

May the 10th, 2021 - The Croatian Aircash app has been gaining inpopularity, and that will more than likely continue to occur as the app allows its users to pay only half the price of a parking ticket, which is something commonly received throughout Croatia.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Lucija Spiljak writes, the Croatian Aircash app is a revolutionary way of sending and receiving money in the Croatians sense. It cuts out paying for a large number of services by making it available in one single click and bypasses all the shortcomings of banks, from standing in linse, entering numerous pieces of information and waiting for the money to "reach" the recipient.

Avoiding all of the headache that the often outdated process in banks cause has been offered by this Croatian app, which is otherwise the very first digital wallet and the country's fastest growing fintech with more than 150,000 active users who have a monthly turnover of more than 150 million kuna.

As an electronic money institution (IES), the Croatian Aircash app is licensed by the Croatian National Bank (HNB/CNB) to operate in accordance with all laws of Croatia and the European Union. Today, they're constantly among the top three apps in their segment on the Apple AppStore and Google Play Store, and recently Aircash was recognised by Huawei Croatia with its addition to the AppGallery store, which has 500 million active users per month worldwide, which Aircash sees as a great opportunity due to the large number of Huawei users in Croatia.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the number of Aircash users who were provided with contactless payment for various services such as sending money, paying bills, parking, telecom vouchers, the top-up of ENC devices and the like was only increasing. Aircash business manager Damir Smigmator says that 2020 has shown how digital wallets are becoming more recognisable because people want fast, secure and easy payment that guarantees privacy. Research shows that the transition to digital payment methods could lead to the re-establishment of balance in the global economy. The novelty they introduced to the Croatian market is the possibility for payment at PBZ ATMs without the need for accounts held there and without cards, which proved to be a big hit.

“In the Croatian Aircash app, the user requests a payment at a PBZ ATM, after which they receive a unique code (OTP - one time password) for the payment, which they then enter at any PBZ ATM and they can then securely withdraw that money. With all these locations, payment is possible to any bank account opened in a Croatian bank with one click from the app,'' explained Smigmator. The average age of an Aircash user is around 30, and they're especially proud because their mobile wallet is also used by older people too.

The Croatian Aircash app story started back in 201, when after the original idea came to be, the development and study of often complex CNB regulations began. Just one year later, they received a license from the Payment Institution (IPP). The quality of their service was then first recognised by INA, which enabled users to send and receive money with a quick payment throughout the Republic of Croatia, which at the time, stated Smigmator, was an absolute novelty on the market.

“We've noticed some shortcomings when it comes to IPP that have started to limit us when doing business, especially in the planned entry into the EU market. We concluded that we want to offer customers across Croatia and the entire EU a better experience, so we started a change in the Electronic Money Institution (IES), which we got at the end of 2019. As we grew in terms of our business, so did our number of employees. At the moment, there are 25 of us, we're all highly educated and we like to say professional in the work we do,'' said Smigmator.

In addition to INA and PBZ, they have established cooperation with many successful companies out there on the market, in various spheres of business. The Croatian Aircash app is readily available at all petrol stations in the country (INA, Tifon), at all Tisak and iNovine kiosks, users can buy Playstation and telecom vouchers for all teleoperators in Croatia (Telemach, HT, A1, Tomato and Bonbon) and much more. It is also interesting that almost 20 percent of their users don't even live in Croatia, and most Croats who work and live abroad use Aircash to send money to their families or to pay for various bills and utilities.

Aircash is entering the EU market too, first to Germany, Austria and then to neighbouring Slovenia.

For more, follow Made in Croatia.

As Filip Pavic/Novac writes on the 6th of July, 2020, apart from the fact that Croats turned to Croatian products from the markets during the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic, they also turned to domestic financial applications. Thus, in the last ten days, Aircash, the first Croatian digital wallet, has unexpectedly taken to the throne of the most popular applications for paying and sending money in Croatia on both platforms, Apple's App Store and Google Play.

This was confirmed by Hrvoje Ćosić, the co-founder and director of Aircash, stating that at the beginning of June they broke the magic number of 100,000 users in the Republic of Croatia, and during the lockdown they achieved three times more traffic through the application than usual. Thus, he says, they have caught up with the hitherto untouchable banking applications and the global competitor - Revolut.

''Over recent months, we used to get about five hundred new users every day. For example, in April alone, through the Aircash application, users realised almost 50 million kuna in various payments,'' says Ćosić, adding that before the coronavirus pandemic, they had slightly less than 60,000 users and far more modest traffic.

The fact that Croats have had to digitise quickly financially in recent months is also evidenced by the fact that other applications that have typically remained at the top of the popularity charts in Croatia, such as KeksPay and Revolut, have also recorded user growth. Thus, Erste Bank's wildly popular application currently has more than 130,000 users (in December 2019 they had 76 thousand), and Revolut confirmed that they are now circulating around the number of 100,000 users in Croatia (whereas back at the end of 2019 they had 70 thousand users).

As for the Croatian "mobile wallet" Aircash, which has been available on the domestic market for three years, Ćosić doesn't attribute the lightning success and the doubling of the number of users during lockdown solely to the available options of receiving and sending money or paying bills, as they're offered by an array of other banking applications too.

''Since the branches of the Croatian Lottery (Hrvatska lutrija) and Supersport were closed, Aircash was the only logical choice for payment and withdrawal. In addition to payments, customers were also able to withdraw their winnings, completely free of charge, at ATMs and other retail locations, which proved to be simpler and faster. Even now, we've noticed that people use the app for that segment equally, even though everything is now open again,'' Ćosić noted.

When they introduced online gaming options within Aircash last year, and then a few months ago the option to purchase PlayStation vouchers, they didn’t even know how important entertainment would be for the isolation period. According to Ćosić, they were even surprised by the high demand for PlayStation vouchers, but it is somewhat understandable considering that all specialty stores were closed for two months.

Transfers from abroad

However, he noted, they aren't building their business only on that segment. For the services they offer within the app, such as entertainment, games, ENC, parking, PlayStation and telecom vouchers, they don't charge any fees. The payment of money to the Aircash wallet is also free, and the user will pay a fee for sending money (of a mere 1 percent) and for paying a bill, just 3.5 kuna per account.

''It's interesting that our turnover in March and April grew in the segment of sending money, especially from abroad. Users from abroad could send money with one click, and the recipient could receive it immediately and withdraw it from an ATM. It is, in fact, an innovation on the Croatian market,'' Aircash's director explained.

What is innovative, he adds, is that to withdraw money from an ATM through Aircash, the user doesn't have to have a bank card or even be a bank customer. They only have to have a mobile phone with them. By selecting the "ATM" option and the desired amount in the app, Aircash will generate a six-digit code which is then entered into the ATM and after verification, the ATM pays the money out.

The money can be withdrawn at all PBZ ATMs in Croatia, free of charge, and at INA fuel stations and at Tisak kiosks. The director added that they're also thinking about introducing a payment directly to the user's bank account, but there is still a disadvantage that such a transaction cannot be immediate. They also plan to introduce the possibility of withdrawing money at fuel stations and kiosks across all EU countries around Croatia.

By the end of the year, they plan to enable payment by Aircash in both physical and online stores, as well as via Google and Apple Pay.

For more, follow Made in Croatia.

Croatia is a paradoxical country at times. It boasts an outdated, draconian system that likes to throw obstacles wrapped in red tape in the path of success for entrepreneuers and their ideas, leading many of them to either give up or go elsewhere to operate under a different flag, but yet, so many startups and so much success can be found here in spite of an unfriendly and self-limiting system. Meet Aircash.

This impressive Croatian startup, Aircash, has 40,000 users and is already hot on the heels of the likes of Keks Pay and Revolut.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Bernard Ivezic writes on the 10th of November, 2019, Aircash is the first Croatian fintech to launch its own mobile wallet. So far, mobile applications (apps) that allow you to replace your physical wallet with your mobile phone and thus pay that way were only offered by actual banks - Erste bank with KEKS Pay, Zagrebačka banka with Telekom Banking and mZaba, then come the likes of Revolut and Monesa.

Aircash is a little bit different from them all, in the sense that it isn't a bank but a new type of financial institution in itself. The Croatian National Bank (CNB/HNB) has now also granted it a full EU license for electronic money.

So far, only three companies have managed to ''get their hands'' on such a license: HT, PBZ Card and Erste Card Club. In addition to the first major regulatory success for a Croatian fintech, Aircash has also gained market success. The Aircash mobile app already has 40,000 users and is the third most popular fintech app in all of Croatia. For the sake of comparison, Keks Pay has 62,000 users and Revolut has 50,000 users, meaning Aircash is definitely on the right path.

Hrvoje Ćosić, the founder and director of Aircash, says they have been building their market position for just over two years now. In mid-2018, they had 15,000 users and a weekly turnover of 250,000 kuna in total.

"We now have 40,000 active users and 48,000 people have downloaded the app, while the traffic we worked with on a weekly basis last year is now our daily traffic and both indicators are growing," Ćosić says.

Make sure to follow our dedicated business and Made in Croatia pages for much more.