Banxa and XT.com AMA session recap
On Tuesday, November 9th, XT.com hosted an AMA with Banxa Head of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations, Liam Bussell. To learn more about what Banxa is doing to make buying and selling easier and safer for exchanges and customers have a read through the AMA below.
“conversion and simplicity is the key”
Hosted by: XT.COM
Telegram: https://t.me/XTensupport
Banxa: Liam Bussell— Head of Communications and Investor Relations
XT.com: Hi, everyone! Welcome to the XT AMA Channel. XT is honoured to invite Banxa today. Let me give a brief introduction to XT first.
XT.com is the world’s first real-time social trading platform with 0% leverage interest. The XT ecosystem has over 6 million global users with a daily transaction volume of close to $5 billion. The platform has real-time indicators and tools that bring the best trading atmosphere for all users. XT Group governs the XT Exchange, XT Capital, XT Labs, XT Academy, XT PooL, and among additional institutions, which comprehensively lay out the industrial chain of digital asset ecology. XT exchange’s innovative social model empowers the blockchain industry through newly developed social trading avenues, which were once not possible. XT has achieved this through a combined effort with our partners, like Btok and Tapatalk.
Today, our guest is Liam Bussell, Head of Communications and Investor Relations at Banxa. Let’s talk to him to learn about Banxa.
Hello Liam, thank you for joining us for the XT and Banxa AMA!
Liam Bussell: Hi! This is Liam Bussell
XT.com: Can you give our audience a brief introduction of Banxa snapshot?
Liam Bussell: Sure — Banxa is a payment service and RegTech (regulatory technology) provider that allows XT.com users to simply and easily use a credit card or banks transfer to buy or sell crypto and cash out/in. We are the first Payment Service Provider (PSP) for the digital asset industry to be listed on a stock exchange, which means that we have reporting and transparency requirements. This makes it safer for users to use a platform like ours, rather than some shady private company or other platforms that lacks any controls.
We help XT.com by handling KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti Money Laundering) regulations depending on which country a customer is coming from. This means XT can focus on giving you guys the best interface and trading experience while we handle the integration to the banking world.
XT.com: how many global crypto exchanges have partnerships with Banxa? Why did these companies choose to partner with Banxa?
Liam Bussell: Banxa is partnered with most major exchanges, at last count the number was 72, but we added 16 new exchanges in October, so we are growing really fast. The main reason exchanges partner with us is our focus on conversion. We aim to have the best conversion in the industry. Let’s consider what this means. Let’s say 100 XT users want to buy more bitcoin. The old payment channel has a conversion rate of 20%. That means, for those 100 people, 80 of them will have a problem. Maybe they change their mind, maybe their ID doesn’t work, maybe they try to upload a selfie 10 times and keep having problems. Some of these problems are unavoidable — maybe the user forgot they didn’t have the funds, maybe they forgot their ID. But for the others, this makes them frustrated and maybe they go somewhere else.
For XT.com, they obviously want as many of those users to have the best possible experience. For Banxa, it’s the same. Obviously, this is how we make money, so we want to be successful, but our needs align with yours, we want you to have the best experience possible, we want crypto to go mainstream. We want your mum buying bitcoin.
XT.com: What problem is Banxa looking to solve on the future of cryptocurrencies?
Liam Bussell: As I mentioned above, conversion and simplicity is the key. We want mums and dads and aunties and uncles buying crypto, and feeling safe doing so. We want cryptocurrency to be the future of money. To do that, we need to make it simple and accessible. Keep your money in the bank, earn 0% interest and pay fees, or put it in BTC and DeFi and earn? What do you want to do?
XT.com: Can you introduce the core team members of Banxa We hear that the team is highly experienced, can we get some examples?
Liam Bussell： Sure. Well, it’s hard to pick a few. We’ve grown from 38 employees to 160 this bull run. Let’s pick 3 as examples.
Domenic Carosa is our founder. He is a serial entrepreneur and was the youngest ever CEO of a listed company on the ASX (Australian Stock Exchange). He started Crowd Media, Was involved in Apollo Capital (Australia’s #1 performing fund because of its exposure to crypto.) He started mining BTC in 2014.
Then we’ll pick myself — as I’m here. I am a veteran marketing leader with 20 years of experience. I have been in crypto since 2016/17. I’ve been a senior marketing leader for 3 blockchain companies that have gone public — ANX (Now BC Group, listed in Hong Kong) Diginex, now Equinex, (listed on the NASDAQ) and Banxa, now listed on the TSX. I don’t think there’s anyone else who’s been involved in taking so many blockchain firms public. In 2017/18 I ran the team that handled the OAX ICO, we raised $19 mn USD, around the same time that Kris from Monaco (now crypto.com) was raising his money. Many of your users are based in China, so you probably know Chandler Guo, or Jehan Chu of Kenetic Capital — we all worked on that project together.
Last but not least, I’ll pick one of our senior developers, Kim. Kim largely built the early iterations of what is now Banxa’s tech stack single-handedly or with help from a small (at that time) dev team, consisting of Jeff, John and Grace. Those 4 probably wrote most of our early code. That team is now over 30 people, but those guys are still our “old greybeards” in terms of code, in terms of adding new blockchains, new coins.
I could go on and on but I think you get the idea.
XT.com: When XT users purchase cryptocurrencies using Banxa services, what procedures will Banxa take to ensure the safety of XT users’ assets?
Liam Bussell: It’s super important to understand that at Banxa — we do payments, we don’t hold your assets. So, there’s no counterparty risk. Once we receive confirmation that your payment has reached us and your ID has been verified, we execute a purchase and deliver those coins to your nominated wallet. Any delay with our service is not coin related. It is ID or payment related. For example, maybe your bank is slow and it takes them a few hours to transfer the fees. Your coins are never at risk with Banxa unless you put in the wrong BTC address
XT.com: How will Banxa plan to provide more new services or products in the future? What will the services or products be? Is Banxa going to support more types of fiat money or cryptocurrencies with its services?
Liam Bussell: For us, adding more payment methods means more choice to customers of XT.com. So, we are always going to be focused on making that experience better. If you look at us, we are the fastest growing company that does what we do. We’ve added 16 exchanges last month, and 17 coins in the last 2 months. This is the speed at which we’ll bring new products and services to XT.com’s customers. DeFi is big for us to, so expect more news from us soon around DeFi coins
XT.com: I have checked that Banxa plan to be the “go-to” crypto to fiat gateway, how are you hoping to achieve this goal?
Liam Bussell: Well, obviously this is aspirational. For us, it is really about serving customers best. I’ve been in the space a few years, and I used to work for a guy who when he was first in the space if you wanted to buy bitcoin you’d find someone on Mt Gox or some other platform and meet them in a Starbucks and bring cash. There was always a chance you could get robbed or scammed. Although BTC was $350 USD.
We’ve come far in a short time, but there is still a lot of work to be done before we go mainstream. Banxa’s aim is to do that work. For your mum, dad, aunties and uncles to be able to enter the space freely. At Banxa, we will do this adding more payment methods, being regulated in more jurisdictions, and adding more coins. This is what we call “Horizon 1”. Then we move to “Horizon 2” and we begin offering more products and services. We won’t follow the pack here — We won’t simply issue a prepaid crypto visa card, that’s been done. If you want that, go speak to Kris at Crypto.com or Brian at Coinbase. We will innovate.
XT.com: What is your timeline, and what can we look forward to from Banxa?
Liam Bussell: I think I answered this above. First, we will expand our current offering, then we will move toward “Horizon 2” early next year. We added 16 partners last month, and consider this to be the new standard. We added 17 coins before that, and we’ve optimized our ability to add more coins down to a single day technical process. All we need is the legal clarity and we can add coins simply and easily. We tend to average new payment methods a bit slower, but they will come too.
XT.com: What is Banxa plan for the remainder of 2021 and into 2022?
Liam Bussell: We will continue to improve our service for XT.com customers, and for our other partners too. We will improve conversion — although feedback from our exchange partners indicates we are the leader in this on most platforms. We feel that being the best is a mindset and involves never being complacent. That happens to companies that become leaders but fail to continue the work.
XT.com: Anything else do you want to share with our community?
Liam Bussell: We are happy to be working with you guys here at XT.com, and we look forward to seeing you on crypto Twitter, at conferences, or online. If you have any questions for the Banxa team, we’d be happy to engage with you!
XT.com：Thank you, for taking the time to do this AMA with us today. It has been great learning more about Banxa and the team behind it