Merusha Naidu, Global Head of Partnerships at Paymentology
Over the past decade, Europe has experienced multiple “waves” of digital banking, each reshaping what consumers expect from their financial institutions. The first wave, emerging around the mid-2010s, was defined by the rise of mobile-first neobanks like Monzo, N26, and Starling, which proved that millions of Europeans were ready to manage money entirely through their phones. A second wave followed as these challengers matured, expanding across borders, diversifying their offerings, and forcing traditional banks to rethink their digital strategies. But the wave emerging now looks different again. Instead of simply digitising banking, this new generation is rebuilding it. It is within this third wave that Snappi sits, not as another challenger bank, but as a model of what the next era of European digital banking will need to become.
Launched this September, Snappi became Greece’s first homegrown digital-only bank, entering the market with a modern design, intuitive features, and a user experience crafted to meet the expectations of today’s digital-first customers. But what has emerged behind the scenes is far more compelling: the realisation that Snappi isn’t following the classic challenger script at all. Instead, it is redefining digital banking around trust, simplicity, financial well-being, and scalable infrastructure, offering the most human neobanking experience in Europe.
On the latest episode of Paymentology’s The Issuer Academy, the podcast where founders, operators, and digital banking leaders lift the lid on how modern financial institutions are really built, Efi Chatziantoniou, Snappi’s Chief Operating Officer, shared the story of how the bank came to life.
Recorded in Athens, the episode brought together Efi, Dr. Leda Glyptis, Fintech Author and Advisor, and Julie Sutton, Head of Growth for Paymentology in Europe, to explore the next generation of Europe’s digital banks.
The First Principle: Trust as a Strategic Asset
Snappi’s COO sets the tone early in the conversation when she explained that the bank earns trust by listening to what customers genuinely need, rather than making assumptions about what they might want. Although this may sound philosophical, it is in fact a deeply operational principle. It influences how Snappi communicates, how it designs each customer journey, and even how it evaluates and selects its technology partners.
But trust at Snappi isn’t just about listening, it’s built into its very foundations. Snappi is one of the only neobanks globally to secure both an ECB and Bank of Greece banking licence before publicly launching. That decision matters: it signals long-term stability, regulatory rigour, and a commitment to operating as a full bank from day one, not simply an app with banking-like features. In a world where many neobanks launch first and seek regulation later, Snappi’s regulatory-first approach sets it apart.
In a market like Greece, where a decade of financial crisis fundamentally reshaped public perception of institutions, trust is an all-important strategic pillar. It is also fast becoming the primary source of differentiation for the next phase of European digital banking.
Cloud-First from Day One: A Different Kind of Foundation
Before Snappi designed a single customer journey, the team made the strategic decision to operate as a fully cloud-first bank. This meant no hybrid models, no partial migrations, and no reliance on legacy architecture, a bold choice for any institution.
This decision is the reason Snappi can scale quickly, roll out new features without friction, deliver real-time experiences across the entire stack, and avoid the legacy constraints that continue to slow much of Europe’s banking sector.
A Market Transformed, and a Continent That Isn’t One Market at All
The episode makes one thing clear: Greece’s digital acceleration is not an isolated story. As Leda Glyptis notes, a pension application that once took years can now be completed in minutes, a shift that has fundamentally changed public expectations of what “digital” should feel like. She illustrates this transformation through her 81-year-old father too, who now leaves the house carrying only his phone because it contains his digital ID, his driving licence, and even his payment cards.
This level of everyday adoption marks a profound change in national behaviour. It has rapidly built public confidence in digital services and reshaped consumer expectations almost overnight.
Yet, as Julie Sutton from Paymentology emphasises, this newfound digital readiness does not make Greece interchangeable with the rest of Europe. Payment behaviours vary dramatically across the continent. Greek consumers rely heavily on digital payments for social, everyday spending; they place high value on 24/7 human support; and they respond strongly to transparency and clarity. These nuances demonstrate that Europe is not a single payments market, it is a patchwork of distinct behaviours that require infrastructure capable of adapting deeply to local needs.
The New Building Blocks: Real-Time and Inclusion
Snappi’s early move to operate in real time reflected a shift in customer expectation, one where delays are no longer tolerated and instant movement of money is becoming the norm in Greece.
The bank’s financial literacy initiative “What the Finance”, already running in cooperation with the Hellenic Financial Literacy Institute, alongside the soon-to-open dedicated learning space “Snappi Hub” in Athens on December 9th, shows a commitment to customer empowerment that goes far beyond traditional digital banking models. Snappi Hub will be a place where financial confidence, learning, and human connection meet the future of banking. Across the entire conversation, a clear pattern emerges: Snappi is assembling the building blocks of a digital bank designed around the realities of its market.
What Snappi Reveals About the Next Phase of Digital Banking
The conversation on The Issuer Academy makes one thing clear: Europe’s next generation of digital banks will not win through features alone. Their success will come from the strength of their foundations, cloud-first infrastructure, real-time capabilities, and the ability to embed trust into every layer of the customer journey. As well from deep localisation rather than assuming European markets behave the same, and from designing around behavioural nuance instead of broad trends. And it will come from partnerships with infrastructure providers who understand how to translate those nuances into resilient, scalable systems.
Snappi is an early blueprint for where European fintech is heading. Paymentology’s role in this evolution, operating at the intersection of real-time payments, localisation, and cloud-first issuing, offers a glimpse of what the most successful digital banks of the next decade will look like: trust-led, context-aware, and built around the realities of the people they serve.
