Much has been said about crypto’s impressive showing in the last 11 months. The industry has proven yet again that its quest for an innovative approach to money and other conventional systems is potent enough to achieve mainstream appeal. A fair share of this success stems from the business and infrastructural makeup up of crypto-powered products. Right from the onset, it was clear that crypto, blockchain, and DeFi technologies tend to thrive whenever the world is in dire need of unique solutions to counter critical economic and social crises like the one induced by the persistent Covid-19 pandemic.
As such, it was no surprise that the crypto industry recorded a sharp increase in adoption, particularly by institutional investors, in 2020. Square and Microstrategy’s decision to hold a percentage of their assets in bitcoin marked a critical milestone that has somewhat propelled the digital asset price to new highs. However, corporations and institutional investors are not the only ones making waves. The rate at which the crypto industry is expanding is nothing short of remarkable. According to a report, the number of active crypto users between the start of 2020 and August rose by 110%. Also, over 3.5 million crypto wallet app downloads in July, which was a record at the time.
Owing to the explosiveness of the industry, I decided to reach out to Max Krupyshev, CEO of CoinsPaid, one of the companies positioned as the gateway to the crypto world. The firm offers an array of crypto storage, payment, and exchange services to both individuals and businesses. Its infrastructures support over 50 currencies, including 20 fiats, and come with a crypto portal that allows users to buy digital assets with bank cards. Likewise, businesses can integrate with CoinsPaid to support a wide range of crypto payment methods.
The flexibility of CoinsPaid’s offerings has contributed to its success over the years. The gateway provides customizable support for clients looking to start their own crypto payment processing business and even go as far as taking up extra responsibilities, including but not limited to compliance checks and marketing campaigns.
It is worth mentioning that CoinsPaid, via its suites of services, has processed over 2.6 million bitcoin transactions. Last year, $265 million worth of crypto transactions were executed on its platform. Hence, it made sense to use the year-end results of CoinsPaid as a template for assessing the growth of the crypto industry as a whole. Below are some of the excerpts of the interview I had with Krupyshev.
Do you resonate with the argument that the crypto industry has had a series of major breakthroughs in 2020?
Max Krupyshev: It is not only the 2020 achievement. Every year brings signs of maturity and adoption. 2020 was strange in financial markets, changed trust patterns to governments – of course, it drew more attention to crypto and blockchain. I think DEFI is an interesting movement but still early days for mass adoption.
How has this industry-wide growth impacted CoinsPaid’s operations?
Max Krupyshev: People talking about crypto is good for us. Online business growth is good for us. I can say that we are in a good spot at the moment. We see huge growth in clients and volumes and do everything possible to grow and improve as demand increases.
Is there a wide disparity between the number of crypto transactions processed in 2020 and the one recorded in the previous year? Would you mind sharing with us stats to prove this claim?
Max Krupyshev: We did just under 1 million transactions in 2019, making around 250M euro in volumes. This year, it is around 2.6-2.7M transactions and 1B euro volumes. So, the numbers are around 300% higher. We got many more clients this year, but it takes time to reveal their true potential – I am very optimistic about 2021.
Which of your array of services contributed the largest share of your crypto payment activities?
Max Krupyshev: These are a few. I would say Payment Processing is the flagship of our B2B offering; we received some nice hot wallet deals that contributed to our volumes. Despite all the back and force, we launched a few successful white label clients who offer B2B crypto services to their clients under their own brand using our software.
According to reports, a lot more people adopted cryptocurrency in 2020. Did this reflect in the total number of individuals and businesses using CoinsPaid wallet?
Max Krupyshev: Unfortunately, we are slightly delayed with our B2C solution; it is still in its beta version. So, we didn’t have a chance to see growth in our retail business yet. But, the volumes for our business clients grew well, and interest from new merchants increased significantly.
How did CoinsPaid manage to adapt to the explosive demand for crypto services? Were there instances where you had to expand your infrastructure to meet up with the upsurge of crypto payment requests?
Max Krupyshev: Yes, all the time. Growing is not as easy as it might look. I mean, of course, it is a good problem to have, but scaling business all while providing dependable services on the same or even better level simultaneously is challenging. We are improving infrastructure, introducing new technologies, and rewriting some parts of the system. Hiring talent is another topic; we always try to hire a bit in advance, but this year we had some hires where we needed a person to “start yesterday,” such as sales managers, developers, and compliance officers.
Creating and automating processes is key. We were a 20-person company at the beginning of the year. Approaches that work for a team of 20 doesn’t work when there are 50 of us. This is where we are right now.
From your operations in 2020, is there enough evidence to conclude that more businesses are willing to receive crypto as payment?
Max Krupyshev: Yes, it is very logical. As crypto adoption grows, online businesses don’t want to miss out on the opportunity, and we’re not even talking about obvious advantages such as processing price and irreversibility. Classical payment methods have become much stricter and have introduced many new limitations for customers. I am talking about plastic card giants and banks dictating to customers how they can and can’t use their funds; this can’t lead to anything good.
It is a known fact that CoinsPaid is big on enabling uncomplicated and effective crypto services through continuous research and integrations. What products or implementations should we expect in the coming months?
Max Krupyshev: We are creating an easy on/off ramp for retail to help our business clients grow. We will soon release our Plug-and-Pay, which will close the gap on how easy it is to pay with crypto – somewhat similar to “PayPal One Touch.” We spend a lot of time improving parts that already work, but we know that innovation is a key element and do our best to deliver innovative and scalable solutions.
Knowing fully well that it is just a matter of time before covid-19 vaccines become available worldwide, do you think that the growth recorded in the crypto industry is sustainable?
Max Krupyshev: I think so. When we say adoption, we mean people who try to use crypto and stick with it. It’s observed when businesses start to have their crypto audience, retail customers continue to remit with crypto, freelancers receive their payments, crypto owners buy goods and services online. I only see one direction – we are moving towards mass adoption.
What will you advise those that are interested in adopting crypto but are wary of the perceived complexity of the whole concept of digital assets?
Max Krupyshev: There is still the issue that crypto and blockchain look different. Trust me, many people are working on making it simple. For businesses, we have found a way to solve problems while safeguarding clients from understanding how it works in reality. Drop us a line; our specialists will help you understand the basics of how you can improve your business and financial flows using the blockchain.
