BANKING CRYPTO ةرفشملا ةيفرصملا تامدخلا BANKING CRYPTO

GLOBIANCE CEO OLIVER MARCO LA ROSA AND CO-FOUNDER IRINA

MUDREAC ARE NO STRANGERS TO BLOCK MAGAZINE, HAVING FEATURED AS OUR COVER STORY BACK IN 2019. WE CAUGHT UP WITH THEM TO FIND OUT WHAT’S BEEN KEEPING THEM BUSY SINCE THEN.

THE LAST TIME WE SPOKE WAS IN MAY 2019. A LOT HAS HAPPENED IN THE INDUSTRY AND GLOBALLY SINCE THEN. HOW ARE YOU AS A COMPANY AND PERSONALLY COPING WITH THE GLOBAL COVID CRISIS?

Our family is doing well. Irina and I enlarged our family with a new baby boy, who is 11 months old now. We’re able to spend more time with our kids and are enjoying a flexible lifestyle. Working from home has become natural for us as well.

Our team is spread all over the world, with an active presence in Germany, Malta, UK, Singapore, Turkey, India, Brazil, Australia and Argentina - so we constantly work remotely and as we have many new colleagues, we never feel isolated or bored. In fact, I would say that the crisis has made us much more busy, due to the increased adoption of digital currencies. Nearly every person we speak to has heard of crypto and many own and trade not only Bitcoin but also exotic coins. It’s an amazing time and we are happy to have been here from the beginning of a new financial revolution.

IS THE FINANCIAL REVOLUTION HAPPENING?

Definitely. We are in the middle of it. People are taking back their financial freedom. Where traditional systems fail and fail to provide returns, new solutions will inevitably come into play.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) lets everyone enter the world of offering financial services and, for example, lend to or borrow from individuals directly – essentially everyone becomes his own bank.

This permissionless world of DeFi places trust in the smart contracts running the automated systems and products driving the market rather than a centralized entity, such as a bank in the traditional world of finance. This is the essence of the revolution and is opening up financial freedom to the world, including the often-forgotten vast amounts of unbanked people (which sits at approximately 1.7 billion people on the Global Findec database as of 2017).

In a relatively short time since the first of the DeFi protocols hit the Ethereum main net in early 2020, we are seeing exponential growth in the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi smart contracts - which currently sits at around $60billion TVL (Defipulse.com). So, the revolution has started, and we can all participate by linking a web3 wallet to DeFi protocol and start lending, borrowing and earning from the many DeFi products and protocols which are growing daily.

But really, we are still early to the game, with the size of the addressable market estimated to be somewhere in the vicinity of $640 trillion to as high as 1 quadrillion USD of traditional derivatives and financial markets which are set to be disrupted.

COMPARED TO YOUR SITUATION IN 2019, HOW HAS YOUR GAME PLAN CHANGED?

We have closed a lot more agreements with banking partners and have ourselves transformed into one. With the difficulties our high-risk clients are facing onboarding to banking solutions we have decided to provide more services directly to provide more services in a seamless experience to our clients. In addition to the European and Singapore platforms we have just set up new platforms in Argentina, Brazil and Australia and plan to launch further platforms soon. We have also decided to open our own bank – GlobianceBANK.

THAT’S EXCITING! SO, WHEN CAN WE EXPECT TO SEE THE GLOBIANCEBANK PROJECT COME TO FRUITION – AND WHAT ADDITIONAL BENEFITS

CAN CLIENTS EXPECT?

The target date for the Go-Live of the first GlobianceBANK is Q3 this year. Setting up more fully owned banks and banking solutions gives our clients more possibilities to store their funds across multiple accounts and jurisdictions to ensure the safety and accessibility at any time. Besides enabling us to provide more and cost-efficient banking solutions demanded by our high-risk clients it will also allow us to trade securities, so new features will be added to our platform.

WHO ARE YOUR CLIENTS TODAY?

Today our volume is dominated by business clients. We know most of our clients personally and many were with us from the beginning. We understand that for a business it is not reasonable to write support tickets and wait days for an answer, so we are always available personally and take the time to listen to the wishes of our clients. We provide custom solutions and implement features demanded by our clients.

We also provide services to retail clients but they only make up a small percentage of our clientele today.

WHAT CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THE RANGE OF SERVICES YOU OFFER?

Our main business is exchanging crypto and fiat currencies. To ease the crypto to fiat transfers we offer our own IBAN ranges, also catering to the high-risk industries. We have LT, GB, FR, ES IBANs that we can provide to clients dedicated. We provide also Multi-Currency Wallet accounts in our Singapore EMI. After going through our KYC/KYB procedure our clients enjoy limitless transactions.

Then we have Individual and Corporate Cards connected to the accounts, which have up to 500,000 Euro monthly limit. Recently we also introduced our Crypto Processing Gateway.

DESCRIBE CRYPTO PROCESSING AND ITS ADVANTAGES? HOW IS IT REVOLUTIONISING THE INDUSTRY?

Our crypto processing gateway has been active since April. It was a product that was in high demand with our clients. It basically replaces credit card payment gateways.

اًضيأ مدقن نحن .ءلامعلل عوضخلا دعب .انب ةصاخلا EMI ةروفاغنس يف تلامعلا عتمتي نأ عيطتسي ، انب صاخلا ( KYC / KYB ) ءارجلإ .ةدودحم ريغ ةيفرصم تلاماعمب انؤلامع

ةطبترم تاكرشلاو دارفلأل تاقاطب اضيأ انيدل

ىلا يرهشلا اهمادختسا دح لضي يتلاو

“ We are still early to the game, with the size of the addressable market estimated to be somewhere in the vicinity of $640 trillion to as high as 1 quadrillion USD of traditional derivatives and financial markets which are set to be disrupted ”

As you know there are certain risks and disadvantages when you offer credit card payments - card fraud, charge backs, rolling reserve, where the card processor holds a part of your money back for a certain time.

Now crypto processing is integrated as a checkout option in the same way, but instead of with credit card, clients pay with crypto. It can be used by any business but is most effective for high-risk industries.

It is by design that there are lower fees, no risk, no rolling reserve, and transactions are definite.

The product is available in a white-label version for the merchant and seamlessly integrated in his platform. The integration can be done in a short time and there are no setup costs involved. Payments in crypto are definitely the best solution for high-risk merchants today.

We invite all merchants to open a free account and try crypto processing in addition to the current payment gateway. Merchants do not need to worry about the volatility of the received crypto assets as those can be automatically converted to fiat currencies.

We provide this solution also to other banking and payment services providers.

WHERE WILL 2021 AND BEYOND TAKE YOU, WHAT ARE YOUR AMBITIONS OVER THE NEXT FEW YEARS, AND WHAT KIND OF CHALLENGES DO YOU ANTICIPATE?

In 2018 we set ourselves the goal to become a globally recognised financial service provider.

We still have a lot of work to do but I think we are progressing well and on a good road going forward. We expanded quite aggressively in 2021. The rest of the year we will slow down and focus on improving our platforms and services and grow the client base in our new markets.

The biggest challenge for the industry is regulation and while we are regulated in Europe and Singapore already, we will seek licensing in other important markets like Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan and Korea as well.