Can you build a billion-dollar fintech with under 50 people? | SquareFi's Anton Lobintsev

Rahul (0:00)

Stablecoin infrastructure spent years waiting for regulation to catch up. The genius act in the US, the new licensing regime in the UAE, it's finally happening, and SquareFi is moving fast.

SquareFi is a one-stop API for fintechs, including accounts, cards, cross-border rails, all settled in stablecoin underneath. And Anton Lobintsev, the co-founder, is raising a Series A partly to fund a UAE license after Mena quietly became 40% of its customer base. And also, I wanted to know, can you really build a billion-dollar fintech with under just 50 people? Now let's talk to him. Hi Anton, thank you so much for taking the time.

Anton Lobintsev (0:39)

Yeah, hi, thank you for having me.

Rahul (0:42)

Yeah, so let me explain SquareFi to you, and maybe you can tell me whether I understand this correctly or not. So SquareFi is a single API that lets a fintech plug-in and get accounts, cards, crypto-valid, cross-border rails, all at once, with stable coins doing the settlement underneath. So they don't have to stitch together multiple vendors.

Anton Lobintsev (1:05)

Totally, totally correct. But it's just a part, because API is one... Yeah, obviously, it's the core of the infrastructure, but also we have a turnkey white-label solution. So if you don't want to develop, if you're not a developer, but you want to run your own bank-like or quasi-bank infrastructure, we can help with that.

Give you a front-end solution, application will be ready, I think, in a Q3 2021 FX. So it depends, API or turnkey solution with a front-end and an app. Yeah.

Rahul (1:41)

So, okay, this is something that I was wondering. So there is API, there is white-labeling solution, and then there is also this consumer application, right? I'm forgetting the name, Mosta.

Anton Lobintsev (1:53)

mosta.io, you're correct.

Yeah. It's our direct B2B solution. Actually, it's a kind of a front-runner, because there is a lot of customers who are coming for us on the conferences, like through direct advertising or something like this, and they're asking just about the cards or accounts or cross-border payments. And all of a sudden, we decided that, why we're just saying that they should go to one of our partners. We can run like our own infrastructure. So, yeah, this is the example of what we can do. And right now, it's just a separate product that we developed.

Rahul (2:35)

Yeah, so where do you see SquareFi eventually evolving to? So is it going to be like API solution, a white-leveling solution, or let's say like a direct consumer?

Anton Lobintsev (2:48)

Well, SquareFi is 100% API solution for the developers. So we are B2B2C or like B2B2X. And Mosta is a separate solution. Separate brands were even establishing separate organization for Mosta. So actually, why is there? Because we don't want our end customer to have a feeling that we are competing with them.

So if there is somebody receiving payment from SquareFi, he can Google for SquareFi, and what he can find out, the SquareFi solution, stable coins, API, very complicated. So probably receiver of the payments will not have an idea to go directly to SquareFi and board. So that's why we're splitting Mosta and SquareFi.

Rahul (3:33)

Okay, help me understand this. So if you're a FinTech, and if you don't use SquareFi, then what are the alternatives? And then how hard it is for FinTech without your solution?

Anton Lobintsev (3:46)

If there is no SquareFi, and I would like to start building something, I don't have a financial licensee, so I want to add a lot of products. Probably I need to go for probably Breach, or guys like Blind Pay for the accounts.

Probably I need to find someone like Wirex for the cards, something for the crypto processing, and probably I will have some problems with the integrational stuff of this crypto processing solution where the Wirex and Breach, because of the compliance stuff, so they don't want, they just want to be sure that crypto is clean, blah, blah, blah, all of this stuff. So even in this case, I just need to find the communication with the three different vendors, and I need to align all of these solutions. With SquareFi, you can have all the things in one place, and it's always growing. So we just started with accounts and cards, and all of a sudden, we're like, let's say we'll introduce an acquiring, so you can just add it to your product, and you will have an acquiring once we will have an acquire.

Rahul (4:58)

Yeah. So besides the product you mentioned, this is again provided that you already have the legal license.

Anton Lobintsev (5:06)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course, we're licensed in Canada.