Mike (Michael) Zetser is a fintech entrepreneur who started his journey in the tech world when he was still a teenager. During his high school studies in Kiryat Motzkin, he established a company that provided marketing services to online trading companies.
Business entrepreneurship wasn’t the natural path expected of him at home. “From childhood, I was channeled towards advanced academic studies”, he recounts. “it runs in the family. My parents met at the Technion – my mother a Ph.D. in microbiology and my father with degrees in mathematics and computers – my grandfather was a professor of materials engineering and my grandmother had an advanced master’s degree. So it was clear that in our family academia is first – and business later”. Nevertheless, Mike was drawn to entrepreneurship.
“After my discharge from the IDF, I established a software company in Herzliya that developed a Payment Gateway – a technological gateway for credit card clearing. The software was marketed abroad, grew and succeeded, and at its peak employed about 60 employees.
“On a daily basis, I operated in areas adjacent to the banking world. I saw the success of global banking and the areas where the ‘old’ banking world struggles. I witnessed how high-tech businesses struggle to explain their vision to banks — and fail. I was exposed to entire populations that the banking world is not accessible to. This is why I established Flyfish — the first marketplace of its kind for financial services. I borrowed the concept of a technological gateway from the clearing world to the banking world, out of a desire to make banking services accessible to populations that ‘old’ banking excludes”.
According to Mike, more than 1.3 billion people worldwide today don’t have access to banking services. Flyfish has developed a unique platform of financial solutions and services – from opening an account, through issuing an IBAN, issuing physical and virtual debit cards, to receiving, sending, and converting money from and to anywhere in the world. The Flyfish platform allows each customer to assemble for themselves a “puzzle” of relevant financial services from several banking institutions.
Meanwhile, alongside promoting the fintech venture, Zetser has focused in recent months on helping combat soldiers. “I set up a food truck for soldiers, which travels daily between battalions and provides them with music, food, and morale”, he says, “I’ve had the privilege of cheering up more than 15,000 soldiers, and I maintain constant contact with the units to help as much as possible”.
