In this episode of the Americas Series, David Yakobovitch speaks to Gil Akos about disrupting and upgrading the archaic payments system in America.

Here is what they covered:

Background:

Gil’s background and what led him to found Astra
What do you see driving the recent boom of the financial transfer market? How has Astra grown as a company in conjunction with this boom?
Who are some of Astra’s customers?
What types of companies can benefit from Astra’s technology?
How does Astra differentiate itself from others in the crowded fintech space?

The current state of the payments system:

What are the current issues you see with the payment system and what can be done to solve these challenges? Specifically, how does Astra solve these challenges?
How do you expect the payments space to change over the next couple of years?
How do you see real-time payments (RTP) affecting the ACH network and the payments system as a whole?
How can banks and financial institutions effectively and safely handle ACH transfers?

Account-to-account and instant transfers:

How does Astra enable account-to-account (A2A) transfers? How are you able to simplify A2A transfers for both developers and consumers?
Why have A2A transfers historically been difficult for banks and financial institutions to execute effectively?
What is Astra’s role in the instant payment space?

Bridging the gap between fiat money and cryptocurrency:

What are the inherent challenges for all Web3 infrastructure?
What steps need to be taken in order to bridge the gap between these two dramatically opposed ecosystems?
How does Astra handle risk mitigation within fiat-crypto transactions to help prevent fraud losses?
How will the rapid growth of crypto/DeFi/Web3 impact the evolution of the payments systems?

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