ASTROPAY
Astropay launches in Europe
Anjali Sooknanan spoke to CEO of AstroPay, Mikael Lijtenstein about the fast-growing payment solution’s recent launch in Europe, its latest innovation and plans for the future
Anjali Sooknanan: What is Astropay’s core business and what makes you different? Mikael Lijtenstein: Astropay is a B2B company, we offer payment solutions as well as a global user community. We offer our digital wallet to more than six million users and 1000 merchants, with more than 200 payment methods available globally. We have knowledge of emerging markets and are expanding across the world including Latin America, Africa, Asia and more recently in Europe. Our solution is free for users, and we’ve tried to make it easy, simple and secure. A key part of expanding across the world is having dedicated teams in every market we are active in; in this way we have a better understanding of what our users need. Our loyalty programme also brings us closer to users, that way we can understand what the user would like to receive from us.
AS: What are your plans for your recent launch in Europe? ML: We began our European launch with the UK, Spain and Portugal. The idea is to grow from there as we’re acquiring more and more users every day, the same way we are acquiring more and more merchants in those markets. The idea is to continue the expansion to other markets in Europe, we are currently in the process of defining how we plan to enter those markets. Part of the strategy is promoting our brand, and we recently announced our sponsorship of English premiere league football team, Wolves FC. As Principal Partners of the club, AstroPay’s branding and logo will be featured on the front of the match shirts, as well as the shirts worn by the esports teams. Wolves’ home stadium Molineux will also display AstroPay’s logo on the LED advertising boards along the side of the playing field. With that partnership we hope to promote our brand and increase our visibility both in Europe and worldwide.
AS: Are there specific markets in Europe that you are focusing on? ML: As I said we started from Latin America, we launched in Africa during the middle of the pandemic, and Asia so we have different teams working in different parts of the world. The way we approach a user in Brazil differs in how we approach a user in India, for example. We need different teams to communicate the product according to the technology access, payment method, etc. It is very important to us, and we put a lot of effort in having dedicated teams to cover the 150 countries that we are processing in.
10 JULY 2022 GIO
AS: Astropay provide payment solutions across Latin America, Africa, and Asia. How does this compare to the European market? Are there any core similarities or differences? ML: In emerging markets, we have been offering users access to traditional payment options and providing popular payment methods with the local currency. Whilst people in a few places in these markets don’t have access to credit cards, most of the people in Europe do. We learned a lot from being in the Latin American, African, and Asian markets regarding what the user needed and what payment method they were looking for. Worldwide we are mobile-first and the younger generation is more digitally-minded, so as a business we are developing our solution to become mobile-first. The technology team is constantly improving the solution. The world is changing fast so it’s key for us to adapt in every part of the business and stay up-to date with the different markets.
AS: As European merchants are beginning to shift towards online deposits, what are the current trends and developments in payment solutions? ML: In terms of cashless solutions, the pandemic has accelerated the move to digital wallets. In some countries people had to go to a convenience store to pay but during the pandemic that wasn’t possible. That caused the shift towards cashless solutions, the world was already heading towards cashless solutions, but the pandemic accelerated the process. Now, people don’t want to waste time completing forms and filling in data, so we are seeing more seamless processing methods with fewer steps. Users want a quick process with less steps which is a challenge but it’s very important. From our side, we’ve created a one-touch integration meaning you can register or sign up, purchase, load balances and deposit in the same process without redirecting. This increases conversion rates for merchants and it has been working. We have 1000 merchants relying on us, we hear a lot of feedback from them regarding what they are seeing from the users, and we work based on that feedback to improve.
AS: Astropay recently launched a new in-app feature. Tell us about that. ML: Our in-app feature offers crypto payments and we started with six cryptocurrencies. The user can buy and sell crypto through the most renowned local payment methods. We launched the feature a few
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