Neat, a mobile banking startup co-founded by former Citibank veteran David Rosa, has opened its waiting list to university students and young professionals with a view to a Q2 2016 launch in Hong Kong. Neat is currently testing its technology and receiving guidance and mentorship as part of the territory’s SuperCharger fintech accelerator, which is backed by Standard Chartered and Baidu. Neat operates from a smart budgeting and savings app with a companion card and uses facial recognition technology to authenticate customers at log-in. The company plans to apply AI technology to user payment data, creating distinct behavioural clusters combined with geo-location to offer personalised and local offers to users. CEO of the bank David Rosa said Neat is an Artificial Intelligence company doing banking, not the other way around. If Google or Facebook were to build a banking solution; this is how they would build their business model, he said. According to him, by not operating any physical branches, Neat’s customer acquisition costs are 16 times lower than those of a traditional bank.