A lot of people, in the tens to hundreds of millions, not through choice of not wanting to use Google Play Services (or knowing what it is) cannot access Play Services on their locally purchased / locked device.
These people are largely outside North America / Western Europe, potential customers for whom a service such as that of OP may be very attractive.
We're excited to bring a fresh perspective and better pricing to a landscape with a lot of providers doing approximately the same thing. We'd love for you to try out the app once it's available - if you decide to register on our site we'll be sure to keep you updated.
> We follow a "trusted devices" model, where you 2FA using your phone number for the first login on a device
It sounds like associating and verifying a phone number is required to sign up and use the service - is this something you're open to changing?
> I assure you there won't be a "refer your friends" badge blinking on the home page of the app
That's great! And TBH I wouldn't mind terribly as long as it can be permanently disabled after a first view.
> We hear from most people that iOS or Android are their preferred platforms, so we have to start there
Understandable. At the very least it would be a huge boon if we can expect to run the Android app without hickups on a fully degoogled Android device (e.g. GrapheneOS).
Will keep an eye on how things develop :)
>It sounds like associating and verifying a phone number is required to sign up and use the service - is this something you're open to changing?
Are you looking for something like Authy or Google Authenticator here?
Precisely! Both are implementations of TOTP[0] - it's a simple protocol which doesn't rely on any particular implementation.
The other common one with that same characteristic would be Fido U2F[1] (for hardware keys such as Yubikey and Google Titan). If/when you do implement it, make sure to support adding more than one token to facilitate users sorting out their own backups.
Both are open standards that are well-supported with both proprietary and open implementations across platforms.
If you have to initially only pick one of the two I'd go with TOTP.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_one-time_password
While many will raise concern with the UX of having to carry around hardware, in the fintech world I think it's a good tradeoff and raises the bar for the industry (I always shudder when I see "we use industry-standard protection"). :)
It looks like you're aiming for a USP of competitive fees but I think I'm not alone in being very happy to not get the absolutely cheapest rate compared to Wise/Revolut/Paypal/N26/PS/MG et al if you stay aligned with the above.
/ Someone who's fed up with the existing landscape