Nils Feigenwinter was still a teenager when he started asking a question most adults never think to ask: why does financial education look almost exactly the same as it did a generation ago, while everything else about growing up has gone digital? At just 20, he co-founded Bling with Leon Stephan to close that gap — starting with a simple prepaid card for kids and building it into a full-blown family finance platform.
Today, Bling counts over 350,000 active family members, has completed its first acquisition, and is now extending its reach into banks and schools through white-label and B2B offerings. We sat down with Nils to talk about building for three very different customer groups at once, why banks are warming up to fintech partnerships, and what it really takes to make financial literacy part of everyday family life — not just a lesson, but a habit.
1. Tell us about yourself / your co-founder(s).
I co-founded Bling together with my co-founder, Leon Stephan. From the very beginning, I kept asking myself one question: why do children and teenagers grow up in a fully digital world, while the way we teach them about money has barely changed in decades? At the same time, financial education still plays far too small a role in schools and everyday life.
That’s exactly what we set out to change.
Leon brings the technology perspective, while I focus primarily on product, strategy and partnerships. That combination has worked extremely well for us from day one.
What started as a prepaid card for children has gradually evolved into a platform for family finance. Our ambition was never to build just another banking app. We want to help families foster financial independence from an early age and we’re building the infrastructure to make that possible.
2. Who are your target customers, and what problem / opportunity do you address for them?
Today, we have three core customer groups.
Families. Parents want to help their children develop healthy financial habits while maintaining visibility and control. At the same time, children and teenagers want more independence. Bling brings both together by combining digital payments, saving, financial education and other everyday family services in one safe and intuitive platform.
Banks. Many regional and traditional banks face the challenge of engaging the next generation of customers. At the same time, they often lack the internal resources to build modern digital family banking solutions themselves. With Bling for Banks, we close that gap by providing a white-label family banking platform that banks can offer under their own brand, helping them build long-term customer relationships from an early age.
Municipalities, schools, childcare providers and caterers. With Bling Schule, we digitalise administrative processes and payments in schools and childcare facilities. We began this mission at the start of the year with Bling Mensa, our solution for ordering and paying for school and childcare meals. Building on its success, we are now expanding Bling Schule to cover further areas, including billing and digital class funds.
3. What is your product / solution? Who do you compete with, and what is your USP?
On the consumer side, Bling offers families an app with a prepaid debit card for children, savings features, peer-to-peer payments for teenagers, financial education and a growing range of services designed for everyday family life. These now include Bling Skills, our integrated financial education platform, and Bling Mensa, a digital ordering and payment solution for schools and caterers. Together, they allow us to support families far beyond traditional banking – from a child’s first pocket money to paying for school meals.
On the B2B side, we offer this infrastructure to banks as a white-label solution. Banks receive a fully branded family banking app built on our technology and can choose the features that best fit their strategy – from savings goals and financial education to personalised payment cards. Bling operates behind the scenes as the technology and infrastructure partner, while the bank remains the customer-facing brand.
What sets us apart is the combination of a proven consumer platform and a modular banking infrastructure. Our products are already used by more than 350,000 active family members and continue to evolve based on real user behaviour. This gives banks access to a solution that has been validated in everyday use and can be launched under their own brand in a fraction of the time it would take to build in-house.
4. How do you help scale financial services (e.g. new customers, new products or distribution channels), and how can financial institutions partner with you?
Many banks face the same challenge today: they want to engage younger generations, but often lack the development capacity and specialised product teams needed to build a compelling family banking offering from scratch.
With Bling for Banks, we significantly shorten that innovation journey. Our white-label solution enables banks to launch a fully branded family banking experience in a matter of months rather than years. Depending on their strategy, they can choose from a range of modular features, including savings goals, financial education, personalised payment cards and more.
Beyond the technology, our in-house marketing agency supports our banking partners in bringing their new offering to market. We share the expertise we have gained over many years in the family banking sector to help them develop and launch effective marketing campaigns.
The result is a much faster time-to-market and significantly lower development risk. More importantly, it gives banks the opportunity to engage families much earlier and build trusted, long-term customer relationships from childhood onwards.
5. What relevant industry trends or market shifts should we be watching? Any research or resources you can point us to?
I see three major trends shaping the industry right now.
First, banking is evolving from standalone products to integrated ecosystems that solve real everyday problems. Families today expect far more than a current account. They are looking for solutions that help them manage pocket money, savings goals, financial education and the day-to-day organisation of family life.
Second, we’re seeing banks become much more open to partnering with specialised FinTechs. Many institutions are recognising that collaboration is often a faster and more effective path to innovation than building everything in-house.
Third, financial education is becoming increasingly important. Young people want to learn more about money, yet many still feel that schools don’t prepare them adequately for real-world financial decisions. At the same time, international research consistently shows that higher levels of financial literacy lead to better financial outcomes throughout life.
That’s why we don’t treat financial education as a standalone product. We embed it directly into our users’ everyday financial lives, where they naturally gain their first experiences with money.
6. What is your current stage and traction, and how can our network help?
Today, Bling serves more than 350,000 active family members and has become one of Germany’s fastest-growing Family FinTechs. For me, though, the most important metric isn’t the number of users, it’s the fact that our products have become part of families’ everyday lives. That’s where I believe the most meaningful innovation happens.
Over the past few months, we’ve continued to expand our platform with new products such as peer-to-peer payments for teenagers, Bling Skills and Bling Mensa. At the same time, we’re scaling our white-label business for banks, helping financial institutions bring modern family banking experiences to market much faster.
Through the FinTech Forum network, we’re particularly excited to connect with banks that see families as a strategic customer segment and are looking to rethink how they engage the next generation. We’re also keen to meet partners who share our vision of making financial education and modern banking more accessible, more practical and more deeply integrated into everyday life.
7. What’s on your bookshelf or podcast app? Your favourite place for a coffee or a drink?
My best ideas rarely come to me sitting at a desk. I do my best thinking on long walks. They help me clear my mind, look at challenges from a different perspective and often spark new ideas.
Whenever I want to take a step back from the day-to-day, I head back to Basel. It’s home, it’s where my family and friends are, and it’s where I recharge.
Bling’s journey proves that when you combine intuitive technology with real social impact, scaling becomes a natural consequence. As traditional institutions navigate how to remain relevant to younger demographics, Bling offers both a model and an infrastructure for long-term engagement.
To explore partnership opportunities or learn more about their B2B white-label solutions, connect with Nils Feigenwinter and the Bling team, or stay tuned as they continue redefining the intersection of family life and fintech.