The Story of Plumery: Building the Future of Digital Banking Experiences

The sound of a modem connecting to a BBS (Bulletin Board System) might be a distant memory for most, but for Ben Goldin, it was the beginning of a journey that would eventually lead to revolutionizing how millions of people experience banking. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Ben shared the story behind Plumery, from its origins in his teenage tech experiments to its vision for transforming banking experiences globally.

From BBS to Banking: The Early Years

“I was born and raised in Lithuania and started pretty early when I was around 15 years old,” Ben recalls. “I was always super passionate about everything tech and even had my own BBS running at home.” This early fascination with technology would soon intersect with another formative experience: his first encounter with banking.

“I had to get permission from my parents, obviously, and I experienced a very clunky, slow and unreliable interface of a traditional bank,” he shares. That frustrating experience led to a moment of clarity: “I said, gosh, if I would have a chance to change that sometime in the future, that would be awesome.”

The Path to Founding Plumery

That early vision would take shape over nearly 25 years of building banking technology. Before founding Plumery, Ben served as the CTPO of Mambu, “the leading cloud based core banking platform, working with around 300 or probably more customers today in around 60 plus countries around the world.”

During his time at Mambu, Ben observed a pattern that would eventually inspire Plumery’s creation. He witnessed “how many organizations are still building the same thing again and again… and still do not manage to create a proper experience for their end customers.” This observation revealed not just a problem, but an opportunity to fundamentally rethink how banks approach digital experiences.

A New Approach to Banking Technology

Rather than following the traditional path of either providing complete out-of-the-box solutions or forcing banks to build everything from scratch, Plumery pioneered a hybrid approach. “We are the first headless digital engagement platform out there,” Ben explains, introducing a concept well-established in e-commerce to the banking sector.

This innovative approach allows banks to “buy for feature parity and build for competitive edge,” combining the efficiency of pre-built components with the flexibility to innovate where it matters most. It’s an approach particularly suited to “mid to small size financial institution anywhere in the world trying to modernize their digital experience. Or a neo bank or digital world trying to build a new proposition from scratch.”

Building the Team and Raising Capital

Just one year into their journey, Plumery has already made significant progress. “We assembled a team of very experienced people, each of them in their own respectful areas, both in product and engineering,” Ben notes. The company has successfully raised $4.5 million, leveraging Ben’s deep domain expertise and strategic networking approach.

“Being someone who did things before, being someone who stayed in the domain for a while, it’s definitely much easier to raise capital,” he reflects. His advice for other founders? “Don’t be too serious. Keep it simple and relaxed… We sometimes are too afraid of doing things we don’t feel confident about our own instinct and thoughts.”

The Vision Ahead

Looking to the future, Ben’s ambitions for Plumery extend far beyond just building another banking technology platform. “My vision was always to change the way how people experience banking and do that for a meaningful number of people globally,” he shares. The scale of this impact could range from “10 million, 50 million, 150 million or a billion” people, depending on their success.

This vision reflects a broader shift in banking technology, moving from purely functional solutions to platforms that fundamentally transform how people interact with financial services. For Plumery, success will be measured not just in the number of banks they serve, but in how many people experience banking in a fundamentally better way because of their technology.

As traditional banks face increasing pressure to modernize and new digital-first challengers enter the market, Plumery’s approach of combining proven technology patterns with banking-specific innovations positions them to play a crucial role in shaping the future of digital banking experiences. It’s a future that, in many ways, brings Ben’s journey full circle – from that frustrated teenage bank customer in Lithuania to the founder working to ensure others don’t face the same frustrations.