From 2014, CoinGate gateway is bringing cryptocurrencies closer to mass adoption by offering methods to set up cryptocurrency payments for any website or physical store. For traders, merchants, developers or just simple crypto enthusiasts CoinGate has become a go-to payment processor for many provided solutions.
In an exclusive interview for DailyCoin, Dmitrijus Borisenka, CEO at Lithuania-based cryptocurrency payment gateway CoinGate, tells how the company worked its way up the success ladder.
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This year the company won the Global Brands Award of Most Innovative Cryptocurrency Payment Gateway in Europe.
Customer-centered finance
CoinGate is taking the mission of adoption seriously. As the financial sector is sensitive to regulations and standards, the company needs to adjust to a fast-changing environment and be in front of innovations to safeguard the funds of customers.
Borisenka says that the company is customer-centered and tries to solve the possible problems before they even arise. He believes this kind of approach is their strength and competitive advantage in a saturated financial market.
The company constantly interacts with merchants and businesses who integrate with CoinGate, to make blockchain technology accessible for them to use.
“We want to have for the merchant as least as possible of potential friction and problems which means that they don’t need to care about the technology behind, they just need to collect payments which is their business and their bread.”
Towards the Future
Borisenka sees crypto behemoths consolidating the market as an ongoing challenge for the company. Coinbase, Binance, and other market giants are starting to provide custodial wallets, currency processing, NFTs, and decentralized finance.
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To maintain pace, CoinGate plans to introduce custodial wallet functionalities on their system. Onboarding the customers interested in trading cryptocurrencies will move the company forward towards new user pools. The company is aspiring to scale overseas, approaching the US or even Asian markets.
“I think there are not many challenges. You just need to be confident in the business and not be afraid. Because with the businesses coming from Lithuania, only now we start to understand that we need to be confident and we can achieve great results,”
believes Borisenka.
New Silicon Valley?
CoinGate started to work its way up the success ladder in Lithuania, as the founders and core team originate from there.
Borisenka notes that starting a business in a small country is very productive. Monitoring the regulatory environment, making the right connections, and fast decisions are more straightforward in the compact social infrastructure of a small country.
Borisenka reminds us of the success story of Skype, which was launched in Estonia. With a user base of more than 660 million users, Skype was acquired by Microsoft for $8.5 billion.
After successfully selling Skype, the founders started to invest in startups to help to build more success stories. Co-founder Jaan Tallinn has now invested around $132 million of his wealth into startups by backing between 100 and 200 companies.
The fintech field in Lithuania is very active as well. According to the organization representing startups, Unicorns.lt, Lithuania, with an entire population of 2.8 million, has more than 2000 active tech startups, which paid €377,7 million in taxes and created more than 30,000 jobs, and the numbers are increasing at a rate of 3x a year.
In 2019, Vinted, a Lithuanian-based online second-hand clothing marketplace, became the first Unicorn in the country after raising €128 million of funding.
Working at fintech companies lifts the competences of the employees, contributing to an ecosystem of innovation. Professionals nurtured by these companies will likely be the founders of the next unicorn startup or will be on top of new innovation. Borisenka is pleased by the professional ecosystem in Lithuania:
“We have very good people and specialists. People are demanding a lot from themselves. So I really can relate to that, and to this day, if I can maintain most of my operations in Lithuania, I’d be really happy to do that.”
On The Flipside
- Small countries are booming grounds for startups. However, to introduce innovations on a larger scale, most of them need a more flexible approach from governments to create efficient business and science infrastructures.
Why You Should Care?
In 2021 CoinGate won the Global Brands Award for Most Innovative Cryptocurrency Payment Gateway in Europe. By offering a cryptocurrency gateway, the company is contributing to the mass adoption of crypto.
Watch the full interview here:
