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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