Genome Blog / media / We are in this together: how Genome helps out companies during the lockdown
Oct. 13, 2020
Keeping afloat during these uncertain times is complicated for some businesses. We at Genome understand it and figured that we should come up with a solution that would support struggling businesses at least partially.
Hence, in April, we canceled all the service fees for companies who were already a part of Genome’s family or were thinking of joining. Now, a month later, the PaymentsSource news website got interested in the initiative and our COO Daumatas Barauskas answered all the questions.
We recommend you check out the full article “Should payments companies continue waiving fees for post-coronavirus recovery?” while we share some of the bits here.
As Daumatas Barauskas explained, Genome’s team saw how the severe lockdown measures caused some companies difficulties. And that’s when we’ve decided to waive service fees, so that business could spend the money on something more crucial, like salaries, to push the economy to faster recovery.
The initiative proved to be effective, as between April and July Genome opened 634 new business wallets, compared to 117 wallets during the same period last year.
Seeing the results, our team concluded we could do more than that. In August, Genome annulled all the service fees for companies based in Lithuania – both low-risk and high-risk, and also lower the SEPA transfer fees from 1 EUR to 0,06 EUR per incoming and 0,11 EUR for outgoing transfers. As a Lithuania-based company, the team wanted to show support to other businesses, and 2020 seems like the right time for it.
Still, Genome’s COO warned other Fintechs, who’d like to arrange similar helpful offers, to be mindful of their capabilities. He pointed out, that while some companies with venture capital can afford to cancel all fees, there are smaller Fintechs that can’t.
“For businesses like Genome, waiving the fees for good is not a viable decision, as central banks charge fees for transactions, and we have capital requirements, so waiving all the fees will lead to losses. The mindless dive of a fintech company into fee waiving, and then that company going bankrupt will do exponentially more harm than good”, – Daumatas Barauskas elaborated.
