Caroline Ménager, co-founder of Pixpay:
Pixpay is the leader in financial education for teenagers from 10 years of age in Europe. Look now: you haven’t learned how to manage a budget, the school can do nothing about it. However, this is one of the most important topics when you become an adult. So we gave ourselves a simple mission: teach each child how to manage their money, with the support of their parents.
So Pixpay, that’s it: a MasterCard payment card for teens co-driven in real time with two applications, one for parents and one for teens.
We launch at the end of 2019 in France. The growth of Pixpay has been pretty crazy, and we now have 200,000 members. We have seen the card payment market for teenagers explode, as did the smartphone devices of the younger generation in 2010. This is also because we provide concrete and simple solutions that address a real problem in families.
We have invested heavily in our application, to make it the most complete and new on the market. In particular, it includes educational aspects such as automated storage methods, sending paid missions to teenagers, looking at the carbon impact on their transactions, the possibility of making micro-donations to associations, and so on.
More and more new players and traditional banks are entering the “teenagers” segment. How do you analyze the situation in this market in France and Europe?
Teen banking is a market that is currently very fast moving in Europe, we can feel a real explosion even a few years behind the United Kingdom or the United States. This is good news, because for a long time, the poor quality of offers from traditional banks aimed at teenagers did not bring equipment to this target group, which it even needed.
France is the most advanced market in Europe on this topic, driven by Pixpay. Today, neobanks for teenagers already represent 12% of finance application downloads in France (1). And initiatives have emerged in other countries: Gimi in the Nordic countries, Rise in Belgium, Bling and Pockid in Germany …
It has to be said that the record collection of Greenlight, Step and Current in the USA in 2021 has aroused appetites.
What is the initial feedback you will give us 6 months after the start of your internationalization to open your service in Spain?
We opened Pixpay in Spain in November 2021. We are very excited: the growth momentum is the same as in France.
We are driven by a favorable context: the needs of teenagers and their parents are the same in Europe, when we talk about online shopping, parents who have little and little money in them, a desire to give power their children… France, traditional banks in other countries do not provide solutions that meet the expectations of families.
Is the upcoming opening in Europe expected in the coming months?
Perfect! We want to provide a response to families across Europe and we are actively working on this.
Can you tell us about “pix & love” and the issues for the brands that will join you?
pix & love is Pixpay’s cashback program. We created this program to meet the needs of Generation Z. Far from wanting a Prévert-style inventory, we strictly choose brands that are part of the daily lives of teenagers and that they love. , such as PlayStation Store, Monoprix, Ornikar, BackMarket, Pathé Gaumont cinemas …
It echoes Pixpay’s ambitions: to please teens with simple and generous deals, but also to help them grow well with brands that help them consume better and better. .
For brands, it’s a time to respond to teens that they’re having a hard time communicating elsewhere.
What are your ambitions for 2022?
France will continue to grow, continue our international development and continue to improve and enhance our application to maintain our efficiency and market leadership.
(1) Source AppAnnie
Pixpay – The best payment card for teens