We sit down with Samuel Flynn, co-founder and CEO at Hands In, a split payments platform enabling users to split payments across multiple cards and people, to explore how the company has fared in the last 18 months and its plans for the future.
With 2024 coming to a close, it’s an ideal time to reflect on how the fintech industry has fared, as well as a short period to take a breath and look to the future. At FinTech Connect, we sat down to chat about Hands In with Flynn.
The split payments platform offers two main payment methods enabling users to:
Use multiple cards for the same transaction
Split payments amongst friends at the point of checkout simultaneously
For customers looking to complete a transaction for a large travel purchase that exceeds their credit limit, Hands In enables them to spread the payment across multiple cards – meaning they can afford purchases they otherwise might not have been able to.
Hands In also addresses this problem when booking trips for late groups. By working directly with merchants and payment service providers (PSPs), the company also enable merchants to offer a group payment option to enable the group to simultaneously checkout on the singular purchase.
Taking flight
Having caught up with Flynn early in 2023, The Fintech Times delved into how Hands In has developed since then. The last 18 months have proved difficult for many fintechs, with macroeconomic conditions pushing many across the globe into survival mode.
However, Hands In appears to have enjoyed sustained growth throughout this period, buoyed by a signing Air Europa, the third-largest Spanish airline, as an enterprise client.
“We went live with them in June 2024 and the results have been astounding. We’ve added $1.4million in incremental revenue to their checkout page – mainly through our group checkout solution. We define incremental revenue as revenue a business would never otherwise get if our service wasn’t available.
“With our multi-card product, up until November [2024], we have recovered just over $2million in declines caused by insufficient funds,” Flynn explains.”What happens in travel often is one in 10 payments decline. By and large, the biggest reason for this is due to insufficient funds.”
Flynn also explains that, according to Mastercard, around 36 per cent of travel transactions decline due to insufficient funds – highlighting the large opportunity that Hands In is trying to capitalise on by enabling customers to leverage multiple card payments for the same transactions.
Incumbent intervention
Shortly before the interview, payments giant PayPal revealed it was launching a new ‘Money Pooling’, enabling customers to set up a pool in its app and invite friends and family to contribute towards large payments.
Initially rolling out in the US, Germany, Italy, and Spain, PayPal’s new offering could, at first glance, be reminiscent of Hands In’s approach to payments.
“The more the big incumbents can get in this space, the better it is for the ecosystem,” adds Flynn. He also revealed why the offerings aren’t as similar as they both might appear: “Where we stand out from PayPal is this new Money Pooling feature is effectively a way for friends and family to pool money together to make a purchase. How we’re different is we offer that anyway, alongside the ability to do it all at checkout. We also offer the merchant the experience to offer this and add incremental revenue.”
Looking to the future
Finally, Flynn also revealed some of the fintechs’ plans over the coming 12 months: “We’re going live with a big ticketing merchant hopefully this month. Next quarter, we have two major payment service providers going live – one based out of Singapore and Hong Kong – and another based out of Bahrain and the Middle East.
“[These moves] are going to platform us not only into more airlines and more travel businesses, but also into other sectors.”
Check out our video interview with Samuel Flynn featuring more details about Hands In exploring new verticals and industries in which its solution would be beneficial, other industry partnerships and clients, and more details about the future:
The post Taking Flight With Hands In: Is the Sky the Limit for Split Payments? appeared first on The Fintech Times.
