Mark O’brien (Marc O’brien), who served as CEO of Visa in the UK and Ireland from 2008 to 2014, was appointed CEO of a startup Crypterium. This publication reports Business Insider.
CryptoStream was founded last year by a group of entrepreneurs who are working on a simple method of payment cryptocurrency in everyday situations. At the end of last year Crypterium raised $52 million in the framework of the ICO.
“The problem is that bitcoin currently seems to be something rather complicated to use as an everyday means of payment. If you want to exchange to exchange your bitcoins or ethers, you may need 3 to 7 days in order to get the money transferred to the account of conventional Bank. That is going to take Crypterium is to make this whole process smooth and give the customer the ability to actually use cryptocurrency to pay for daily needs,” said O’brien.
According to him, currently the startup team, recruiting experienced professionals in the field of financial services having worked quite well at the stage of formation of the concept and conduct of the ICO, the developers approached the creation of an operating model that requires the involvement of “experienced professional teams who are used to dealing with large-scale, global operations.”
For release in the future of cryptocurrency or “virtual” cards Crypterium plans to enter into a partnership with Visa or MasterCard. It is assumed that the map will be linked to a cryptocurrency wallet, created by a startup, and every time the client conducts a transaction, developers will receive a request for the system to check the account on the adequacy of funds on balance to conduct the transaction and confirm the transaction. Moreover, according to the expectations of the team, all of the above will happen “in a split second”.
Method by which Crypterium plans to implement this decision without suffering from the extreme volatility of cryptocurrency is, according to O’brien, a kind of “secret”. He also notes that the aspect of the protection of intellectual property is carefully studied by the developers.
Considering that the problem of impossibility of payment, cryptocurrency don’t really care about the citizens of the developed countries, far from the cryptocurrency sphere, O’brien emphasizes the usefulness of products startups in markets with high rates of inflation — for example, Argentina or Turkey.
“We have a unique opportunity to create in a sense a safe haven for consumers in these countries. […] Now we are looking for a way of organizing a global operating business and resort to legal assistance at a high level in terms of how to structure the business to run operations in USA, Latin America, Singapore, with full right and appropriate licenses in each of the listed jurisdictions,” explained new CEO Crypterium.
It is worth noting that the startup has a team of three people in London and ten in Moscow, however, the developers are contemplating the possibility of opening offices in new York, Singapore and Miami. Currently Crypterium discusses details of a potential partnership with some companies and plans to launch the first products to fall.
We will remind, representatives of the Visa in January announced that it will not work with bitcoin “directly” because it is “speculative commodity”, while in MasterCard are ready to consider only “national digital currency.”
