A single application to manage one’s wealth and book a room at La Réserve, with the information encrypted on a private blockchain? Wecan answers Michel Reybier.
When Michel Reybier took part in the Series B round of financing completed last April by Wecan Group SA, the Swiss pioneer of blockchain-based compliance solutions for private banks, he was aiming for much more than a return on his investment in a promising startup. His goal was to contribute to the creation of a unique solution that would allow customers to send messages and documents via secure channels to a community of actors close to their daily lives, their private banker, a hotel, a clinic.
Interview with Michel Reybier, serial entrepreneur.
«This investment in Wecan is part of my strategy to invest in innovative, digital and privacy-friendly companies.”
Your investment in Wecan is strategic. How do you see the partnership with Wecan and its evolution?
This investment is part of my strategy to invest in innovative, digital and privacy-friendly companies. The Wecan Group has already proven itself in Switzerland with private banks and asset managers. The company will expand its products internationally, and we also believe in the potential of Wecan’s disruptive solutions in other sectors such as the hotel industry. Wecan has the potential to create the WhatsApp for private clients who want to respect their privacy, confidentiality and security of their communications, whether with their banks, managers, hotels, clinics, lawyers, notaries, etc.
Will you be a passive or active investor?
I will be an investor who will be involved in the development and growth of Wecan. With the common ambition to extend the solution to other sectors than banking, we have already started to work on the hotel part. Our short-term objective is to have a product that we will use in our hotels, and then that we will market together internationally in the medium term. Together, because joining forces will certainly allow us to accelerate current developments and initiate new ones.
“Since 20 years, we lead the way in a singular and very contemporary vision of luxury and hospitality.”
Which solutions developed by Wecan do you intend to apply in your fields of activity with which concrete implications?
Our expertise will enable us to diversify Wecan’s products towards our core sectors, which are the hotel industry, the medical field, the wine industry and real estate. All these sectors, like the banking sector, are facing a digitalization that brings many opportunities, as well as an acceleration of the creation of digital data. In this respect, Wecan is specialized in the respect of the confidentiality and security of the exchanges and communications of these data, but also in the respect of the compliance of the suppliers, the collaborators and the standards or certifications which are important to us.
What benefits do you see in implementing these solutions? Whether it’s for managing your operations, differentiating yourself from your competitors or for your customers?
The end-to-end customers of the private banks and asset managers who use Wecan’s products are also our customers, whether they are for our hotels, our clinics or our wineries. We want to offer them services that secure their data and their exchanges while respecting their privacy. The exclusivity behind our hotel or medical activities will be further strengthened with what we are going to set up with Wecan, and will allow our customers to be in an exclusive club on an international scale.
Would you say that Wecan’s solutions are revolutionary for the following industries: luxury hotels; hospitals; wineries?
These solutions are the future of our business, and the continuation of our vision. For more than 20 years, we have been paving the way for a unique and very contemporary vision of luxury and hospitality. In Switzerland, France or London, each of the Michel Reybier Hospitality addresses bears the values that are dear to it: excellence, authenticity and simplicity. By combining our expertise, we will ensure that these values are maintained over time.
