It has now been more than a year since the end of Bankera’s ICO, and we are well ahead on our journey to become a blockchain era bank. At this point, one might wonder: How did this journey start? Where exactly are we headed? How are we going to reach that destination?
In this blog post, we are going to answer each of these questions, telling you the story of Bankera from its very beginning, discussing its current achievements and explaining what lies behind the vision and philosophy of the project.
Once upon a time
The history of Bankera started 6 years ago when three young professionals with experience in finance and software development founded SpectroCoin – a FinTech company with the aim to offer cryptocurrency payments at the dawn of the crypto era.
Even then, the founders were dreaming big and named the company to represent a spectrum of financial services they were planning to offer. Ever since it has been providing crypto brokerage, wallet, debit card, and eventually payment processing solutions.
In 2017, the company was steadily expanding its services and gaining new clients. However, having gathered invaluable experience in the FinTech and crypto markets, the team of then already 40 members decided it is time to take the next step.
While happy with the product we had, we wanted to take our service beyond crypto payments and develop a full financial infrastructure for the blockchain era that would encompass everyday banking and the crypto economy to offer a financial solution fit for the needs of today’s tech-driven market. We named the project Bankera.
While we knew we had the know-how necessary to build the blockchain era bank, we required more capital for the project of this scale. Thus, on the 28th of August, 2017, Bankera launched an ICO to gather the funds needed to take our project to the next level.
Thanks to YOU, our valued community, the ICO attracted a record number of 100,000 contributors from across the world and helped us expand our team to 100 professionals. Fully equipped, we set out on a journey to dominate the blockchain era.
Piece by piece
However, current regulatory and legal frameworks have not been too friendly in terms of the use of cryptocurrencies in the financial sector. It became increasingly harder to build a unified entity that would encompass core banking and cryptocurrency services at the same time.
Instead, we have decided to develop our solutions as separate units: the whole ecosystem of Bankera could be now seen as a puzzle, with every product of ours acting as a piece of the full picture that we are aiming to complete.
From the start, we already had one significant puzzle piece – our first product SpectroCoin. Nevertheless, we had no plans to slow down and began working on new products, as well as improving the old ones.
Developing the ecosystem
Over the years, SpectroCoin has been working on extending the support of cryptocurrencies, payment options, as well as expanding the accessibility of its services to users across the world. These and other developments have helped SpectroCoin become an all-in-one solution for cryptocurrencies and grow its community to nearly 1 million users globally.
As the ultimate goal of Bankera is to bring crypto and traditional economies together, it is essential to split our business development strategy between both sectors. That is why in July, we announced a partnership with Pervesk – an Electronic Money Institution licensed in the EU.
Pervesk has the right to provide electronic money services across Europe and will act as an important gateway to fiat currency payment services in Bankera’s ecosystem, thus helping us overcome the key challenge of bringing blockchain based services and traditional finance together.
This year we have also released a long-awaited Bankera Exchange – our second tangible product in Bankera’s ecosystem. With the addition of the new trading platform, we are now finally able to offer our clients a full set of exchange services including brokerage and peer-to-peer trading.
However, SpectroCoin and Bankera Exchange are just the first essential puzzle pieces of the stand-alone solution for the blockchain era.
Where are we headed?
While we are continuously working on improving our current products, we are also focusing our attention on new product development. On the road ahead, we have three main milestones to reach, each representing a core branch of banking services: Bankera Loans, Wallet, and Investment Tools.
Firstly, in the third quarter of this year, we are going to launch the Bankera Loans platform. Bankera Loans will provide individuals and companies with an opportunity to take both fiat and crypto loans while using personal cryptocurrency assets as collateral.
The platform will act as the perfect choice for the blockchain enthusiasts, both as a chance to diversify their trading portfolio by adding new assets and as an opportunity to gain additional fiat money without giving up their current crypto holdings.
The second product already under development is the Bankera Wallet service. Designed to provide access to a wide selection of traditional payment methods, the project will act as a “bank in a wallet” solution. The wallet will support a range of fiat currencies and offer attractive exchange rates for low-cost currency trading.
Finally, Bankera Investment Tools are going to be developed. The service will comprise various solutions for investing customers’ assets, such as low-cost exchange-traded funds with a possibility of trade basket diversification. Bankera is also planning to offer financial advisory services powered by the most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
Eventually, the products within Bankera’s ecosystem will cover every core financial service bridging the gap between traditional finance and crypto worlds. That is when our puzzle is going to be completed, with its pieces joined together to offer an all-in-one banking solution for blockchain era needs.