2391 - Making Crypto Payments Work for Everyday Businesses with INXY Payments’ Serge Kuznetsov

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0:46Visit podverified.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now, it's Serge Kuznicev. Serge, you are the co-founder of Inxy Payments. That's I-N-X-Y dot I-O is the website. Serge, it's great to have you. Likewise. Thank you very much for having me. You are in beautiful Barcelona, Spain. Thank you for joining us. And Serge, before we kind of talk about what you do with Inxy and what Inxy is, You know, I always love learning what leaders do for fun when they are not at work, kind of what they're geeking out on. What have you been into lately?

1:28I'm a super curious person, and I'm an early adopter on the curve of, you know, of the customers. So I love trying new things. I love to experiment. And one thing which I would like to highlight is actually freediving. I'm really fond of freediving because there is a few things which is completely unique in this. Free diving means you dive deep. Free diving, yeah. Yes, it means diving deep without oxygen, so only using your own tons. And the funny thing about it is that to do so, you have to calm down a lot. So your pulse and heart rate should go down, your thoughts should be super calm, your muscles should be relaxed.

2:06Otherwise, you will not be able to dive deep. And due to this, so you're calming down yourself as max as possible, then you dive and the feeling is very similar to meditation but you're it's kind of you know meditation during the flying because when you're diving it's very similar to the flying you know well i haven't tried flying to be honest but it's pretty similar and the combination of this feeling when you dive in deeper into the you know depth of the water you fully calm down and the result afterwards is like you had like a couple of hours of rest. So that's super, super interesting thing for those who are under a big stress.

2:47I highly recommend to try it out. The only one thing and only one, you know, colon so there is that you couldn't practice. It's everywhere, you know. It should be pretty deep. It should be water nearby at least. But I really love it. How deep are you talking? Like how many feet? It could be like hundreds of meters. It depends on On the level of professions. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. My teacher, actually the world champion, he dived, I think, 125 meters deep without breath. That's incredible. Absolutely, completely agree. That is, I mean, first off, that's a pretty deep breath to go. Yeah. Yeah, you know, even, boy, I was like thinking, you know, I think the deepest, you know, I'm here in Florida, so I don't know, you know, where my opportunities are, but, you know, even just, I've noticed what you're talking about, you know, even just like, you know, 18 to 20 feet, but just, you know, going down and being on the floor of the ocean and just, you know, seeing the creatures there, I do feel transported to like another world.

4:03and like everything just is nothing else matters. And I'm just, I'm there. I feel like, you know, kind of detached from the rest of the world for a moment. And it's so serene. You're fully relaxed. So you also observe all this beauty. Plus you're in so calm, like a state of your mind that you even can absorb it even deeper. So it's an incredible feeling. You know, I can do my own research on this, but just real quick, Like, how do you handle, like, the pressure with your ears? The funny thing, that we have absolutely unique bodies. So basically, you just, you know, do the things. I don't know how to say it correctly.

4:45So you just... Plug your nose and blow. Add some pressure, like, pressing your nose. You just add additional pressure. And you dive in deeper. Then you add more, add more, add more. And it actually compensates this completely. So there is no problem. well if you're feeling not so well if you have like snoring or something there might be some problems but usually no problems at all oh that's a great well i'm learning so much i love this well i'm i'm looking forward to i don't know that i'll ever do over 100 meters but how that's 20 would be enough yeah well well serge thank you so much for that um you were welcome inksy uh inksy is actually, if we talk about the business and benefits, we're actually helping the regular businesses to receive payments in stable coins and in crypto, convert it to the fiat, settle to the bank account.

5:38So basically helping them to do it legally, easily. So we handle all compliance part, legal part, technical part, and just help them to receive it, convert it to the fiat, settle to the bank accounts. And usually it's just a matter of reducing the costs. Because in stablecoins, it's just way, way, way more cheaper. Because regular payments can cost you like 3%, 5%, 7%, depending on which solution do you use. But in stablecoins, it's below 1%. And the same thing about even more, I would say, there is more possibilities and advantages if we're sending money abroad. So usually, if we try to pay somewhere, let's say, on the different part of the world, we use SWIFT.

6:28SWIFT means weak, at least weak, sometimes more, sometimes less. It depends on your luck. And it also can cost you up to 7%. In the stablecoins, it is below 1 % and it's two minutes. Wow. Two, three minutes max. So on every$1 million, you can have the discounts or you can save 50, 60K on every single million. So it's just so much cheaper and so much more easy. That's why it's becoming so popular around the globe. And is this something that it's currently not offered by your larger payment processors like PayPal or Stripe? They partly introduced it. using not all the blockchains are supported, but of course all the big players are trying to integrate it because it's so much easier and so much faster.

7:28And one more interesting part, that is it is much more transparent as well because blockchain is fully visible to every single person. And there is a special solution which we and different partners around the globe are using, which is actually helping you to track all the transaction which was done by any wallets through all the time. So if there was any road activities, any terrorist activities, any, you know, something connected to the criminal, guys, we will see it immediately. And you cannot hide it. You cannot erase it from the blockchain. That's, you know, a very unique part because it's so much more transparent than the regular money.

8:09And, well, majority of people just don't know it because they think it's something, you know, not clean, not transparent, but it's completely vice versa. Interesting. So, and again, I admittedly, I know nothing about stablecoin and NFTs, you know, crypto, like I'm really, really ignorant there. For someone like me, I know I'm not asking for a 101 on everything, but can you help me understand maybe some of, you mentioned stablecoin in particular, can you just maybe just give a quick 101 to some of the advantages here. Obviously, for transactions, there's significant opportunities for savings. That you have my attention on.

8:56Why stablecoins have become so popular? Because if we talk about bitcoins or Ethereum, it's always fluctuating a lot. So it could be 10 ,000 today, 20 ,000 tomorrow. So it's so hard for accountants, so hard for the regular people, well, in terms of trading, maybe it's good. But for us, if you want just to trade goods, buy goods, purchase anything, stable coins is one-to-one packed to US dollars. So for example, USDTs and USDCs are completely equal to the dollar. Well, not completely, there is like zero, zero, zero, zero, something. But for the regular users, it's completely the same. So it means that we're sending dollars just through the blockchains, which is super fast, super cheap, and super easy.

9:40That's in a nutshell. Yeah. And, and can you share maybe here we are in 2026, you know, from the outside in, it feels like a world that it seems like there's, there's some turbulence. And so, but, but I guess, you know, just thinking about it from the I'm just a business owner, right? And so I can either choose to offer this as an option or not. Can you share maybe a little bit about the opportunity and maybe what you've seen with clients that have offered this? Usually, if it's also, of course, it depends on types of the businesses. So sometimes the business just have more users or partners who are into the stable coins or crypto, but the world is changing.

10:32Actually, the more and more regular businesses are moving there because it's so cheap, it's so fast, it's so reliable, so easy, etc. So just a few numbers. In 2025 it was$46 trillion being used by businesses via stablecoins which is almost three times more than Visa. Of course, some of these volumes are, let's say, speculative, but But even if it is half of it, it is more than Visa at all. So can you imagine, only during the previous year, it was growing so fast. And, well, I'm really thrilled, you know, that just one more example. I had a call with, let's say, bank, Neobank in the European part of the world.

11:27and the guy is CTO. And the first thing he told me, I think that the crypto is scam. So that was the beginning of our conversation. So it was okay, interesting. But then he told me that, but our customers are asking for that. So let's do that. And it's so huge changes in the mindset when even if the CTO thinks that it's not okay, but the customers are asking, it means that something is changing. And it happened just during the last year, because previously, majority of businesses was thinking, ah, come on, it's not something we're really interested in. But now, the more and more regular businesses, even offline businesses, are starting to think about it.

12:10So, yeah, it's just booming. And so, how does Inksy compare to other providers? So, you would be a gateway then? It's kind of, there is like several solutions within our solution. It's also a gateway, yeah, to like PayPal, Stripe, but in crypto, in stable coins. And also we provide the possibility to do mass payouts, like thousands and thousands. Yeah, I just saw that. Yeah, you could point mass payouts, you could save some money. Like 100 ,000 cents on transactions per day, which is completely impossible in the regular money world. Because if you will try even thousands of transactions through the bank, it's right.

12:52your bank will be completely closed. They will be asking, what the hell is happening? Where are you sending this money to? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So you just die. In stable coins crypto, you can do tens of thousands of transactions per day. No problem at all. And it also opens so much opportunities for freelancers, for partners around the globe, for influencers. There are so many use cases which currently we're working with. and it's so fast and so cheap and so easy that people just, when you try it at least once, it's super hard not to use it anymore. It's just like this. And our main differentiation here, because to be honest, majority of the players are pretty similar in majority of like technical part.

13:38Some are more deeply technical, some are less deeply technical, more reliable, et cetera. But from the first perspective, it's really hard to judge. But what we're trying to do, We're trying to help regular businesses to handle this. You know, we're trying to help the accountants to help to solve their problems. So we help them to prepare the documents, reports, et cetera. We can even convert all the incoming stables to the euros or dollars. So all the reports will be in dollars or euros. So they don't need to, you know, to tell this, you know, headaches of how to do it properly because we've already done it for them.

14:15And of course, we also do not work with the high-risk industry because a lot of crypto players are there, like gambling, casinos, betting, etc. That was our strategy initially. We are not moving there and we are not working with these types of businesses, which also gives one more advantage. It's a super, super high level of success and customer support. Because in high-risk, it just doesn't make any sense. You know, you will be substituted within an hour, within two. So it doesn't make any sense to be super, you know, good in terms of the services. But in a low-risk environment, the service is super important, especially when the people are just getting used to use stable coins.

14:59They can send in their own blockchain. They can, instead of USDT, send USDC, et cetera. And we help to handle all these things. So we try to help people and help businesses to be successful here. Because it's also win-win. If they will be successful, we will be successful. Customers will be happy. So everybody's happy. You know, it's just the best combo possible. Yeah. So you work with, I mean, it looks as though marketing and agencies, freelance platforms, payroll, hosting cloud providers, gaming, fintech. Yes. You accept over 20 different cryptocurrencies. Correct. You're over 100 plus agencies and networks.

15:38And I think the interesting thing here is there's zero setup and there's no monthly fee. Do you mind maybe just talking about implementation for a second? Well, always it's a problem with the developers. The developers are the most busy people in the world, I think. So there is a feeling they work in like 27 hours per day. So they're always busy. So that's the only obstacle actually usually we have. And there is different types of integration. you can just pass KYB, you know, because we are working with the businesses, so we have to check what type of businesses you are, are you reliable, etc.

16:16So it should be fully transparent for us. Then if we pass the legal part and compliance part, it's only the integration which remains. And here there is different possibilities. First is just to use our payment link. So no integration at all is needed. Just to use the payment link, they give it to the customers and customers can pay. But, of course, it's not that intuitive and not that easy because people have to, you know, to put the numbers, emails, whatever. So, of course, we do recommend to do it through the API and to integrate through the API max one week. It's super easy with all the testings, with all the environments.

16:56So with all the setups. So it's pretty fast, I would say. hmm well i gotta tell you um i would you know i i don't like uh you know a lot of the you know visa mastercard american express i mean you know it's been they're they're kind of uh i appreciate them but boy they can be a you know they take quite a bit sometimes can be pretty slow to work with and a lot of other complaints that i think many business owners have so i appreciate surge you know, having at least having options. So this will be really interesting to watch. Well, Serge, website, Inksy.io, someone going from here, what do you recommend they do and click on and check out next steps?

17:39Well, definitely book a call with us if they're interested, because usually, you know, it's the easiest possible way, because if we will see that you are as a business, business person is interested in that, it's always easy to talk to you to understand your needs and to find the solution to you. That's also a very big benefit of us in comparison to the big guys, that we can be super flexible. We can help you to build exactly what you need. We can help you to set up it correctly, et cetera. So what I do really recommend is just to fill the form and just to start the boarding, maybe ask directly to the customer support and the guys will tell our sales team to connect and to help because I'm also working in the sales right now.

18:25I'm helping our business teams as well. So I'm usually the biggest guys, but I would be happy to do that as well. Yeah. All right. Serge Kuznetsov, again, co-founder of Inxy Payments, INXY.io. Serge, thank you so much for the conversation. You were welcome. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. If your goal is to grow your business, increase revenue, and build authority without gimmicks, this show is designed for you. Each episode gives you practical insight from leaders who have turned trust and credibility into real business results. If you value short, thoughtful conversations that respect your time, make sure you're subscribed.

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