“First came traditional banks. Then neobanks. Now, the next step from Young Platform: positioning themselves as one of the first European companies aiming to build a truly crypto-native neobank.”
That’s how Young Platform recently described its mission on X, making a bold claim about where finance is heading. Founded in 2018 by a group of students in Turin, the company started with a simple idea: crypto should be clear, safe, and accessible to everyone.
In just a few years, it has grown from a student incubator project into one of Europe’s most promising fintech stories, with products that mix education, regulation, and usability in ways designed for everyday people alongside seasoned traders.
We spoke with Alexandru Stefan Gheban, Co-CEO & Co-Founder of Young Platform, about the journey from startup to regulated exchange, and how their vision of a “crypto-native neobank” could redefine how Europeans interact with money.
Q1: Can you take us back to the beginning? What first gave you the idea for Young Platform, and how did being students shape the way you wanted to make crypto easier?
At the very beginning, we weren’t trying to build a company… We were trying to solve a personal problem. As computer science students, crypto felt like a closed circle: too complex, too technical, and ultimately too elitist. What struck us wasn’t just the lack of accessibility, but the lack of trust. We saw a technology full of promise, but a market that excluded most people either by design or by negligence.
So we asked ourselves: what would crypto look like if it were built for people who are curious, ambitious, but without a technical background or financial expertise?
That question became Young Platform. Not a platform for “traders,” but a platform for everyone, built to make crypto clear, simple, and educational for everyone.
Being students shaped everything: we weren’t legacy players trying to disrupt finance. We were digital natives trying to rebuild trust from the ground up.
Q2: Launching a crypto exchange from a student incubator must have had its challenges. What obstacles did you face early on, and how did you overcome them?
Launching a crypto exchange as under‑20 founders was bold and also structurally uphill. And doing it from Italy made it even harder.
The first challenge? Credibility. You don’t get bank accounts or institutional partners at that age, especially not in crypto. We had to earn trust from day one: by surrounding ourselves with experienced advisors, being radically transparent, and proving we were passionate and serious.
Then came the regulatory void. When we launched, there was no legal framework for crypto exchanges in Italy. So we had no choice but to build our own internal compliance system, anticipating future regulation, not waiting for it. We studied AML directives, designed robust KYC flows, and set standards that could hold up to scrutiny, years ahead of formal recognition.
In a country where banking was born and where financial conservatism often outweighs innovation, that’s really difficult. It’s countercultural. But we didn’t try to bypass the system. We engaged with it. We worked within it.
And that’s what defined Young Platform from the start: A company born from trust, built for trust.
Q3: Young Platform was born from a desire to make crypto accessible to non-experts. How do you keep the experience welcoming for both newcomers and seasoned traders?
We’ve always believed that accessibility and sophistication don’t have to be in conflict. That’s why Young Platform is designed around layered complexity.
At the surface, the experience is simple, intuitive, and educational — ideal for newcomers who just want to get started without fear or friction. But underneath, there’s depth: advanced features, diverse products, and tools that experienced users actually want to use without needing to leave the platform. It’s not about dumbing crypto down, it’s about guiding people up.
We use gamification and clear UX to lower the barrier to entry, and once people are in, we give them reasons to stay. This dual approach reflects how we see the market evolving:
The next wave of adoption won’t come from traders. It will come from people who want utility… not just volatility.
And we’re building for both.
Q4: From raising capital to building a strong team, what milestones stand out as key moments in your growth journey?
Our growth has always followed a clear trajectory, not of explosive shortcuts, but of deliberate steps.
We didn’t start with an exchange. We started with Step — our educational journey — because we knew that before people could trade crypto, they needed to understand it. That choice defined everything: it helped us build a community, not just a user base.
People didn’t arrive for hype. They arrived to learn. And they stayed because they trusted us. Only after that trust was built did we launch the exchange, as a natural evolution — not as a standalone product, but as part of a bigger vision.
From day one, we saw Young not as a trading platform, but as a pathway to financial literacy and independence. And that same logic shaped our team. We didn’t want to recreate a traditional company. We built a culture that was the opposite of corporate: fast, curious, horizontal. A place where people feel ownership beyond responsibility.
Looking back, the real milestones weren’t the headlines. They were the moments we chose to grow slower but stronger.
Q5: In early 2023, you expanded into France with regulatory backing. How are you navigating international markets, and what drives your global vision?
When we expanded into France in early 2023, it was a growth play as well as a strategic test.
We had built our compliance framework before any crypto regulation existed in Italy. Applying for AMF authorisation allowed us to validate that model against one of the most advanced regulatory environments in Europe.
We didn’t choose France for convenience. We chose it because it anticipated the direction of travel: full regulatory supervision, strong investor protection, and alignment with the European framework defined by MiCA.
We didn’t wait for the rules to arrive. We built around them in advance. Then, as the bear market deepened in late 2023, we made a deliberate choice: to pause our geographic expansion and focus on evolving the platform we’ve always envisioned. Not just an exchange. But the European platform for digital asset investments: compliant, and designed for long-term use.
A platform that makes banking and investing easier, faster, and cheaper with regulatory depth, not shortcuts.
Q6: You’ve also started offering B2B services to financial institutions. What trends are you seeing in crypto adoption among legacy players, and how is Young Platform helping bridge that gap?
In the last two years, traditional financial institutions have moved from passive observation to active exploration. What’s changed is the tone. It’s no longer “if”, it’s “how”.
But adoption among legacy players comes with real constraints:
- Regulatory risk
- Infrastructure gaps
- Reputational concerns
That’s where we come in. Young Platform is designed to operate at the intersection of trust and innovation. We’ve built consumer-facing products with retail UX and regulated infrastructure that meets institutional standards.
Now, we’re making that infrastructure available to banks, asset managers, and fintechs through B2B services:
- Plug-and-play crypto investment rails
- Custody and compliance modules
- Front-end solutions with white-label flexibility
We’re not trying to disrupt institutions, but helping them evolve. Because the future of this market won’t be defined by pure crypto-native players alone. It will be shaped by those who can translate Web3 into regulated, usable, and trusted financial experiences.
Q7: In one of your recent announcements, you described Young Platform as Europe’s first “crypto-native neobank”. It points to an entire philosophy of how people should interact with money. How does Young Platform’s ecosystem aim to redefine that relationship? And what does that mean for the future of finance?
Traditional banks were built for a world where money moved slowly, where access was limited, and where trust relied on opacity. Crypto didn’t just challenge that, it inverted it.
We believe finance should be accessible, programmable, and aligned with user incentives… not institutional inertia. That’s the philosophy behind our ecosystem.
We started with education and onboarding because the first barrier is psychological. Then we added simple, compliant access to crypto investing. Now we’re integrating saving tools, debit card functionality, staking, and traditional financial products, all within one seamless experience.
It’s not about offering “crypto on top of banking.” It’s about rebuilding financial tools from the ground up, using crypto as the default layer. And we’re doing it with a regulated, European-first approach because the future of finance won’t be purely decentralized or purely institutional. It will be hybrid. Embedded. And radically user-centric.
Q8: You recently teased some major launches: a payment account with debit card cashback in $YNG, regulated perpetual futures, and a new scarcity model for your token. Which of these do you see as most transformative for your users, and why?
We’re not simply adding features. We’re building an engage-to-earn ecosystem, where every interaction, such as saving, spending, learning, and staking, becomes a way to unlock value. And that’s a shift from passive finance to active participation.
The payment account and debit card, with cashback in $YNG, are just the first visible step. Users spend fiat, earn $YNG, and are naturally brought back into the ecosystem, not through speculation, but through usage. It’s frictionless, rewarding, and fully integrated.
But what makes it sustainable is the new $YNG token model: A long-term scarcity and reward engine, designed to support value creation through platform engagement, not market hype. The more you use the ecosystem, the more utility you unlock. Engage-to-earn turns activity into alignment.
We’re also introducing regulated perpetuals, a powerful feature for advanced users, but always within a compliant and transparent framework. Because our broader vision is clear:
We’re evolving Young Platform into the definitive European platform for digital asset investments. MiCA-ready, and built from the ground up to combine usability with regulatory depth.
We’ve never chased short-term visibility. We’re building the infrastructure that will define how Europe interacts with the next generation of finance.
Q9: When it comes to building trust in crypto, how important is local presence and regulation, especially emerging from Italy, and how does that shape your strategy?
Being local matters. Especially in an industry that too often hides behind anonymity, complexity, or offshoring. We chose to start and stay in Italy, not because it’s easy, but because it’s one of the most regulated environments in Europe. If you can build trust here, you can build it anywhere.
From day one, we’ve engaged with regulators, not avoided them. We are the first company to register with the OAM, and we proactively tested our framework in France ahead of MiCA. That approach isn’t a constraint. It’s a moat.
Local presence also means cultural proximity: supporting users in their own language, educating them in a familiar context, and creating financial products that reflect how people actually live and save.
This philosophy shapes everything in our strategy. We’re not trying to build a global product that works “everywhere”.
We’re building a European platform that works deeply, locally, and legally in every market we enter. Because crypto doesn’t need more promises, it needs infrastructure people can trust.
Q10: What impact do you hope Young Platform will have on the broader financial landscape in Europe, and could this model influence mainstream banking or fintech norms?
We don’t just want to participate in the European financial system; we want to help reshape it. Young Platform was born from the belief that finance should be understandable, rewarding, and built around people, not institutions.
We’ve proven that it’s possible to combine crypto-native innovation with regulatory depth and deliver that experience to the mass market.
The impact we’re aiming for is twofold.
First, we want to set a new standard for how digital finance operates in Europe — one that’s regulated, transparent, and designed around real users, not abstract models. A platform where spending, saving, investing, and earning are not fragmented experiences, but part of a coherent ecosystem.
Second, we believe this model can influence the broader financial industry. Not by replacing banks, but by showing them that people today expect more:
- Seamless UX
- Aligned incentives
- Instant access
- Clear education
Crypto isn’t the alternative anymore; it’s becoming the benchmark. If we succeed, we won’t just change how people interact with money. We’ll raise the expectations they bring to every other financial product they use.
The post Building Europe’s First Crypto-Native Neobank: A Conversation with Young Platform’s Co-Founder appeared first on BeInCrypto.