Antler Investor Memo Series: Blockchain Payment Gateway Syrax Rewrites the Rules for Merchants Using Crypto

Early-stage investment firm Antler Australia recently backed a new cohort of startups as part of its ongoing program to build great local tech companies.

Startup Daily shares details of each company in the “Antler Investor Memos” series, which is designed to give you a quick and accurate understanding of the startups and people involved, many seeking follow-on capital after the initial pre-seed investment. of Antler.

Business: Syrax

Date of training: 2022

Business Stage: Pre-boot

Founders: Sanjeev Rao and Babak Rafat

Current investors: antler

Currently on the rise: Yes

Deals

Despite recent turmoil, the rise of cryptocurrency as a viable payment method continues as blockchain becomes an increasingly robust alternative to legacy systems. More than a quarter of Australians own or have owned a cryptocurrency, according to the Independent Cryptocurrency Reserve Index.

Meanwhile, payment growth is expected to continue at a compound annual growth rate of 21.5% by 2026.

A decentralized payment solution in cryptocurrency, Syrax, is a multi-chain crypto payment gateway for secure transactions on the blockchain, allowing users and merchants to send and receive payments directly. By doing so, it ensures that there is non-custodial third-party ownership, which means that individuals’ assets are protected.

As things stand, it is often complicated for individuals to make secure cryptocurrency payments directly to merchants, as centralized providers require “Know Your Customer” (KYC) information, while merchants have often have reservations about holding cryptocurrencies due to liquidity issues.

Syrax offers a cryptocurrency agnostic payment experience with full interoperability allowing an individual to associate their wallet and the cryptocurrencies of their choice.

The user’s payment experience is fast and frictionless and merchants can receive stablecoins or central bank digital currency (CBDC) to help ease any concerns about the stability of payments received. For merchants accepting cryptocurrency payments, payment time per transaction is instantaneous, minimizing cash flow issues, while chargeback issues caused by fraudulent activity are eliminated.

Antler Investment Thesis

“Syrax’s decentralized, non-custodial payment solution is a compelling offering in the ever-changing cryptocurrency landscape. The interoperability of the product provides merchants with a seamless conversion path at the point of payment, eliminating the friction of traditional lengthy KYC processes,” said Cath Rogers, Partner at Antler Australia.

“Our belief in the founding team stems from Sanjeev and Babak’s extensive experience in the payments and e-commerce industries, coupled with impressive pilot projects secured within months of our initial investment.”

Traction/milestones

Since securing Antler’s initial investment late last year, Syrax has secured two pilot projects with e-commerce and marketplace partners, with several more discussions for national partnerships underway.

Syrax has engaged a number of major financial institutions in high-level discussions to integrate their CBDCs. This will be an important part of various pilot programs defining how they will interact with customers and other cryptocurrencies.

Latest Funding

Pre-boot from antler

Use of funds

With pre-seed funding from Antler, Syrax has doubled its engineering capabilities to develop its MVP and serve its pilot projects. Along with strengthening its direct sales pipeline and go-to-market strategy.

Syrax continues to refine product functionality in anticipation of upcoming pilot projects. From there, the focus will be on developing new payment functions and business tools.

The founders say

“Our vision for Syrax is to be a global provider of decentralized cryptocurrency payments. We believe that ease of use and non-custodial payments are the first steps towards user trust. As a third-party non-custodial provider , the user retains the power of ownership,” said Sanjeev Rao, co-founder of Syrax.

“Syrax is wallet and crypto agnostic for good reason. We know that some users want to use only decentralized cryptocurrencies. We know that some merchants will only ever use a CBDC or a stablecoin. In doing so, Syrax must be adaptable to differentiate our use case so users can ultimately decide how they make payments.

“And with that, we see Syrax as a complete payment solution for any form of cryptocurrency payment.

“With extensive experience in the retail, e-commerce and payments industries, we purpose-built Syrax to be globally scalable from day one with a unique advantage in the payments landscape. .

“We have been incredibly fortunate to have Antler’s guidance, support and investment.”

And after?

Antler, a global early-stage VC, reveals all of its latest investments made in ambitious Australian founders and startups. With over 100 start-up investments, Syrax is one of the newest companies in its portfolio.

• StartupDaily is Antler’s official media partner in Australia.