Astra

Couldn’t agree more - Axal is proud to partner with Gil Akos and the whole Astra team to make earning on stablecoins intuitive and accessible If I’ve learned anything about business since launching Axal, it’s this: - know who you are and what you are in this for (for me: unlocking savings for the world, no barriers) - believe in good people and build the future with them (Ari Santos, Jacob Kozhipatt and the whole Axal squad) - constant praise, constant constructive criticism, and always moving forward So excited for the future!

It's ironic, but the most successful stablecoin companies need to be great at fiat rails too. Might seem counter-intuitive, until you realize the dynamics of open vs closed loop systems. 🤯 How do you seed an ecosystem with value to exchange with shiny new programmable dollars? Gotta get those dollars in and out seamlessly! Here's our latest piece on how Astra is helping cutting edge stablecoin companies win.

What do stablecoin companies need for success? Interoperable fiat rails! Check out our latest post on how to think about payments when building with stables: https://lnkd.in/g3y7-WhJ

How do you measure the value your payments partner is delivering? Outside of "do the payments work right," the easiest benchmark comes down to *workflows* – here's how to break that down: To scale successfully through embedded payments, you need to be able to execute the right payment at the right time, but almost everything else is requires process and action across your entire company. Orchestrating the lifecycle of a payment is a workflow, onboarding a customer is a workflow, reconciling balances in your treasury is a workflow, and so on. And these work streams affect every single team within your company, even through to finance, ops, and compliance. Historically when you integrated with a payments gateway, your engineering team implemented the APIs, *then* also all the adjacent internal connections to the other business units. Guess what? That ends up being slow, painful, and distracts you from growing through your new payments solutions. Platforms like Astra *integrate* those workflows for you, so each business unit can plug in and manage their scope easily, without waiting for engineering to wire up their systems and tools. If your compliance team has out of the box tooling, you're on the right track. So, when evaluating your partner, look at what every team can automate and streamline through their offering, not just the payments execution. More integrated workflows equals more value which will enable you grow. And if revenue growth is a priority or I just described the pain you're feeling, send me a line!

How do you accelerate the adoption flywheel and increase LTV for your sellers? Instant Payouts is the strongest answer. Check out our playbook for Seller Marketplaces and how you can leverage our API: https://lnkd.in/ezdVHu-J

RIP "every company will be a fintech company"? ☠️ Five years ago, Angela Strange at a16z made a prescient statement that begain mainstream for founders and investors. It was compelling – as financial infrastructure became accessible, companies across every industry would derive significant revenue from their own fintech operations. But the productization with the available infrastructure trended toward the simplest form of the statement, where every company started to look like a bank. There were definitely some winners but it turns out operating a banking product is really hard, fraught with fraud, compliance costs, and operational overhead. The thesis was right, but the first wave of outcomes missed the real opportunity. But it is still true that there are immutable components to embedded financial services that multiply value creation – lending, payments, etc. What's actually working? Companies that embed payments into their core product, without becoming payments companies themselves. Shopify doesn't want to be a bank. But Shopify Shop Pay? That drives conversion because it's delivers value to their customers, not overhead for Shopify's P&L. The real value will not be derived from every company building their own payments infrastructure, it's in removing customer friction and the cash flow tax from slow transactions. So the next prediction: not "every company will be a fintech company" but every great company will embed one and those that embed the best solutions win!

Digital tipping is critical for today's restaurants, and SpotOn is delivering through Astra and Visa Direct! Here's the win, win, win: ✅ Staff win with increased access to their earnings ✅ Restaurants win through improved staff retention ✅ SpotOn wins by empowring their customers to do more through their platform This is the real power of instant payouts, it multiplies impact for all stakeholders!

Big news: Astra is powering seamless rapid payouts for SpotOn’s new DayCheck solution, enabled by Visa Direct! With Astra's instant payments infrastructure, restaurant owners can now skip manual cash handling and prefunding while employees get fast, reliable access to their tips — boosting satisfaction and retention. This collaboration shows how Astra’s API-first platform makes modern money movement simple: from initiation to settlement, we remove friction so partners like SpotOn can deliver financial innovation at scale. We’re proud to help strengthen restaurants and empower the people who power them. Learn more: https://astrafi.com/ #Payments #Fintech #Astra #VisaDirect #SpotOn https://lnkd.in/gyPcSYpR

From Fuel Cards to Invoice Factoring, instant payments are the unlock for unlocking more revenue your Fleet or Last-mile platform. 💸 🚚 If you're considering adding faster payments, here's the playbook for success: https://lnkd.in/ekau9Hc2