With the ability to send cross-border payments becoming more and more difficult with traditional Banks, the rise of “neo-banks” and digital platforms attempting to fill this gap has seen immense growth in recent years. As well as this, it seems that a large number of individuals and businesses are switching their payment tactics over to crypto-currency to operate effectively when they wish to send and receive funds from payments internationally.
One person we just had to speak to when it comes to this is Fintech entrepreneur and payments guru Theo Antoniou. Theo Antoniou currently heads up the sales department of the EU based banking platform, WireWallet. WireWallet offers named IBAN accounts to European and non-European businesses wishing to make cross border payments easily and with fair fees. We asked Theo Antoniou what he thinks the next step will be in terms of international payments, and he told us “in terms of traditional banks, they aren’t going anywhere. However, there is space for neo-banks and crypto-currency platforms to move in and make these transactions easier”. Theo Antoniou went on to explain that a huge amount of his current client base is looking for alternative methods to make international payments. The 29-year-old entrepreneur disclosed to us that “businesses are no longer OK with accepting long transaction time-frames, and things need to be sped up”.
With the race for ensuring that Fintech platforms can cater to the large influx of merchants needing the ability to make cross-border payments in full swing, Theo Antoniou explained to us that bitcoin is becoming a more widely accepted method of making international transactions and that he has seen growth in terms of his merchants requesting such methods of payments.
With time-frames for sending bitcoin in the minutes, it makes sense that businesses will wish to pursue crypto-currency as a way to pay their suppliers and get paid. From what we understood, it appears that Theo Antoniou is happy to be able to see that customers are looking for methods that are outside of the traditional ways of sending funds and with bitcoin becoming widely available he expects customers to flock towards this channel.
One company that recently announced it will be providing services to customers wishing to receive bitcoin is LegionPay. LegionPay is a bitcoin payment gateway that provides its users the ability to receive bitcoin and then settle these funds in fiat currencies such as EUR, USD, and GBP to their bank accounts. This method of channelling funds significantly reduces the processing times as bitcoin can be received to LegionPay on average in under 10 minutes, and with auto-settlements to bank accounts, customers can operate more efficiently and effectively cross-border.
Theo Antoniou quotes “it’s not about one method taking from another, it is about the payments ecosystem working as a single unit to better facilitate the process, and given customers the ability to operate fairly and cost-effectively”
