Billionaire Michael Gastauer, CEO of Black Banx, has had a remarkable career spanning decades and a profound impact on the fintech sector. Though his life has been marked by vision, creativity, and leadership, what does Gastauer’s future in fintech hold?
Toronto-based Black Banx, a financial institution with offices in Europe, Asia, North America, and Latin America, was founded and led by Gastauer. He is one of the 100 most influential people in the fintech industry and a proponent of the fintech revolution.
By the end of 2018, Black Banx Group, one of the businesses with the quickest growth rates, had a US$9.8 billion valuation.
German-born Gastauer started his first business at the age of 24. The company was sold to a Swiss investment group for US$ 16 million after acquiring over US$ 1 billion in AUM in a span of just three years.
Gastauer developed an online payment system as one of the first in Europe to provide the e-commerce sector with solutions for international card acceptance and payment handling. Before the company was sold in 2008, Gastauer guided it to steady growth, profitability, and a US$480 million valuation.
The direction that Black Banx will take under Gastauer’s leadership is a subject that the fintech community is quite interested in. The company currently has 180 operational countries worldwide, and its goals for global expansion are nothing short of audacious.
Black Banx presently welcomes more than 1.8 million new customers each month. Gastauer has a promising future in fintech as he works to diversify the company’s regional and service offerings.
Black Banx has discovered the growing opportunity of fintech in Africa, where financial services are not available to 45% of the adult population. The company established a subsidiary in Monrovia, Liberia, with the intention of concentrating on providing online banking services in the West African market.
Gastauer formed the Gastauer Family Office (GFO), a single family office with US$ 11 billion in assets under management. As the founder and chairman of the non-profit Gastauer Foundation, Gastauer also works to address the issue of the 2.2 billion people who lack access to financial services. His future in fintech not only sees profitability but also opportunities to tap the unbanked and underbanked populations across the globe.
Gastauer’s perceptions of future trends and his capacity to strike a balance between innovation and reliability will be crucial in determining the direction of the fintech landscape in a sector that experiences rapid change. Truly, Black Banx CEO Michael Gastauer’s future in fintech is going to be a story of inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs who also want to make their mark.
