Jamal Raees & Yanni Giannaros: Wyre – Using Blockchain for Cross-Border Payments
Wyre is a leading fiat-to-cryptocurrency and payment infrastructure company for the cryptocurrency ecosystem. In blockchain time, Wyre has been around forever -- it was founded in 2013. Wyre leverages blockchain to facilitate cross-border payments, bridging the gap between traditional payment processing and digital assets. Focusing on developers, the company provides easy-to-integrate APIs which enable thousands of developers to bring cryptocurrency to the masses. The company has “on-ramped” over 15 million end users to their partners and has processed over $10B in payments since inception.
We were joined by Co-founder and CEO Yanni Giannaros, and Director of Crypto Strategy Jamal Raees, to chat about payments applications in general and in web3, how Wyre works on a technical and business level including regulatory constraints, their recent acquisition by Bolt, and the roadmap for the platform.
Topics covered in this episode:
- The history of Wyre and the changes they have seen in the space over the past 10 years
- Yanni and Jamal's backgrounds and how they met
- A technical overview of Wyre
- The challenges of running an onramp
- Bolt's recent acquisition of Wyre
- Payments applications in web 3 - what works and what doesn't
- The Wyre business model and fees
- The jurisdictional restrictions for using Wyre and Yanni and Jamal's thoughts on the current regulatory environment
- The future of crypto interfaces
- The Wyre roadmap
Episode links:
Sponsors:
- ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter
- Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone
This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/449