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:

• Wyre
• Wyre on Twitter
• Yanni on Twitter
• Jamal on Twitter

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