Wirex Pay announces pioneering step forward for cryptocurrency payments with new app integrating traditional finance with blockchain
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Wirex Pay, a leading decentralised payment network incubated by Wirex, has announced early access to its innovative crypto payment app. Now live for select whitelisted users. This exclusive opportunity offers early adopters a chance to experience the next era of crypto payments. It can seamlessly integrate digital assets into everyday transactions – all directly from a non-custodial wallet.
With Wirex Pay, users can enjoy full financial autonomy, conducting secure, fast transactions in over 200 countries, whether shopping online or in-store. Designed to remove intermediaries, Wirex Pay ensures users maintain total control over their assets while making crypto payments easier than ever.
Key Features of Wirex Pay:
Seamless Crypto Payments: Effortlessly pay with digital assets in real-time
Full Control: Manage and spend crypto directly from non-custodial wallet
Security & Privacy: Enjoy full ownership of assets with no intermediaries
Pavel Matveev, Co-Founder of Wirex Pay, commented:
“Wirex Pay represents a significant step forward in the evolution of crypto payments. We’ve removed the barriers between crypto and everyday transactions, giving users the power to spend their assets freely and securely. We’re thrilled to offer this exclusive early access to our community and can’t wait for everyone to experience the future of payments.”
Wirex Pay offers a safe, decentralised payment solution, with built-in ID verification to ensure account protection while allowing users to control their digital assets fully. The platform bridges the gap between blockchain technology and real-world spending, empowering users to make instant, secure transactions worldwide.
About Wirex Pay
Wirex Pay is a pioneering modular payment chain, incubated by Wirex and powered by Polygon’s advanced Zero Knowledge (ZK) technology. This innovative platform seamlessly integrates traditional finance with blockchain, providing a decentralised, gasless, and on-chain payment infrastructure. Wirex Pay enables users to make instant, secure payments using a wide range of cryptocurrencies, all while maintaining full control over their assets.
FinTech Strategy hears from Till Wirth, EVP of Product at Wise Platform, to find out more about its mission to make international payments fast, low-cost, convenient and transparent
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At Money20/20 Europe in Amsterdam, Till Wirth, EVP of Product at Wise Platform, took part in an impactful session titled “From Personal Payments to Enterprise: The Changing World of Cross-Border.” Wirth’s panel talk focused on the transformative trends in cross-border payments and their implications for both personal and enterprise financial transactions.
“Wise is a global technology company building the best way to move money around the world. Wise Platform is Wise – but for banks, large businesses and other major enterprises.
We allow our partners to embed the best way to send, receive and manage money internationally into their existing infrastructure, creating value for their business and customers.
Over the past decade, Wise (formerly known as Transferwise) has built a global payments infrastructure that has revolutionised how money moves around the world. Now, thanks to Wise Platform, other companies can gain access to our industry-leading, reliable service seamlessly.
We save partners time and money by allowing them to deploy new products and services to customers seamlessly, helping them to speed up innovation and serve, retain, and grow their customer base.”
FinTech Strategy spoke with Wirth to learn more…
Tell us about the genesis of Wise… Why is this an exciting time for the company?
“For us at Wise, it’s all about continuing towards our mission of making international payments fast, low-cost, convenient and transparent for our customers and partners.
It’s an exciting time for us as we’ve moved over £118bn on behalf of our 12.8 million active customers in the last financial year and helped them save more £1.8bn in fees. Over 62% of Wise’s transfers are completed instantly (in 20 seconds or less). Wise Platform, our global payments infrastructure for banks and enterprises is growing quickly, too, which allows us to bring the benefits of Wise to more people around the world.”
Tell us about your role…
“I lead the Wise Platform Product team building the global payments infrastructure for banks, financial institutions and enterprises around the world. For example, my team built the product behind the collaboration we announced with Swift last year.”
What are some of the key challenges financial institutions are facing that you can help them with? What problems are they asking you to solve?
“Consumers now expect their cross-border payments to be instant, convenient and transparent. And they are moving to providers they can trust to provide these services. As a result, we’re seeing banks focusing on retaining and winning back their customers through improving their cross-border payments experience. This is exactly what Wise Platform is helping them to do.
We work with more than 85 partners globally, including Bank Mandiri, Indonesia’s largest bank by assets, Shinhan Bank, one of South Korea’s oldest and largest national banks, and GMO in Japan to provide them with the capabilities, technology and network to enable fast, secure and cost-effective international payments for their customers. Quickly, directly from their own apps, without any major technical overhaul.”
Tell us about a recent success story…
“In June this year, Wise Platform hit a major milestone when our integration with Nubank, the world’s largest digital banking platform with over 100 million customers, went live.
Thanks to our partnership, Nubank’s premium Ultraviolet customers can now access multi-currency accounts and debit cards powered by Wise directly from their Nubank app. Customers benefit from a convenient user experience that we’ve tested and iterated over the years for our own customers to seamlessly manage their finances internationally.”
Why do you think the evolution of collaboration between banks and fintechs is set to continue?
“One of the reasons is that while banks have scale, they can gain agility in non core focus areas by working with fintechs and deliver significant customer benefits quickly.
Most banks have been built to focus on domestic banking, meaning their global cross-border payments are often not a priority. However, fintechs are better able to specialise and focus on one specific customer pain point. This means they can innovate much more quickly.”
Why Money20/20? What is it about this particular event that makes it the perfect place to showcase what you do? What’s the response been like for Wise?
“It’s a great event that brings the industry together and enables us to discuss the progress we’re collectively making. This year in particular, it was great to be on a panel to discuss how the cross-border payments landscape is evolving and the latest trends we’re seeing. We look forward to the upcoming event in the US later this year.”
The ability to scale available space up or down on demand could provide procurement teams with an invaluable degree of flexibility.
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From retailers to manufacturers, enterprises that handle large amounts of product and raw materials have always needed places to put it. As a result, the vast majority of industrial real estate is devoted to warehousing, with 11.1 billion of the 14.8 billion square feet of industrial real estate in the US classified as warehouse space.
Warehouse square footage is essential, not only to logistics, but to the procurement department. You can’t buy things if there’s nowhere to put them. Procurement teams working to support the needs of the business as a whole are therefore bound by the limitations of the physical space the business maintains for storage.
Changing demands
A procurement function’s ability to respond to changing demands—either from within the company or when performing direct procurement in anticipation of demand from without—is limited by the physical warehousing space maintained by the enterprise. However, more space isn’t always the solution, as real estate is costly to buy, develop, maintain, secure, and so on. Small and even medium sized enterprises may not have the capital or resources to maintain their own warehouse space, and—in an era of e-commerce-first business models—may have more distributed business models than can be supported if warehousing space is internally owned.
The answer to giving procurement teams the flexibility they need to store, move, and acquire necessary stock for the business could lie in On-Demand Warehousing.
On-demand warehousing
The model “allows eCommerce businesses to access warehousing solutions as and when needed, without making a long-term commitment, through a pay-as-you-go system,” write Dr Banu Ekren, Dr Ismail Abushaikha and Dr Hendrik Reefke in a recent report. By using a platform to purchase space within a larger warehouse on a short term basis, businesses gain the flexibility to grow (or shrink) their procurement of inventory in line with the demands of their business, without the need for long-term rental agreements or costly real estate purchases that the business “might” grow into down the line.
On-Demand Warehousing platforms can also reduce environmental impact by consolidating inventory from multiple buildings into singular facilities—reducing the need for heat, electricity, etc.
Walmart turns to Indian suppliers to meet procurement needs, aiming to buy $10 billion worth of goods per year by 2027.
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US retail giant Walmart is shifting its procurement strategy in response to a sea change in fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) manufacturing from the Global South.
Broadly speaking, Walmart’s strategy is to accelerate its procurement of goods from “categories where India has expertise.” These include food, consumables, health and wellness, general merchandise, apparel, homewares and toys. Additionally, Walmart spokespeople have noted that India—which is home to the third largest pool of scientists and technicians in the world—“has some of the brightest minds in innovation, and we want to explore potential solutions to challenges in our value chain with these innovators and startups.”
Andrea Albright, Executive Vice President of Sourcing at Walmart commented: “India is well-positioned to support increased demand for products by Walmart customers, and we are excited about our partnership with Hero Ecotech. This collaboration furthers our work to strengthen resiliency in our global supply while contributing to economic growth worldwide.”
Accelerated growth
India’s manufacturing sector is booming. Led by the automotive, electronics, and textiles sectors, Indian manufacturing is projected to reach $1 trillion in the next three years, according to a report by Colliers. A surge of investment—both domestic and international—is driving this growth, with the state of Gujarat receiving the lion’s share of the growth as the region is “becoming India’s manufacturing powerhouse.”
In order to support the development of its procurement network among Indian suppliers, Walmart has also announced plans for an invite-only event to be held in New Delhi this February, where “Indian export-ready suppliers are invited to apply to pitch their products to our buyers for Walmart U.S. stores and Sam’s Clubs,” and “Innovative Indian companies are invited to pitch solutions addressing sourcing challenges across apparel, general merchandise, fresh and packaged food, health and wellness, and consumables. Pitches may lead to pilot projects within Walmart’s value chain.”
