Safello is piloting a way for companies without a crypto business to offer customers crypto purchases in their own digital services, under Safello's MiCA licence. The first test runs in Sweden, with an external partner and on bitcoin.se.
Photo: Frank Schuil is chief executive of Safello.
Safello is a Swedish crypto exchange, founded in 2013, with more than 426,900 users. The parent company Safello Group AB has been listed on Nasdaq First North Growth Market since 2021, and the subsidiary Safello AB is licensed under MiCA, the EU's rulebook for crypto services.
The company is now launching a pilot for what it calls crypto checkout. The solution is aimed at companies without their own crypto business that want to let their customers buy crypto in a service they already use, without having the expertise or licence to do so themselves. Safello does not say which types of companies it has in mind. The model is often referred to as crypto-as-a-service: a company with a MiCA licence provides the crypto services, while other companies offer them to their own customers.
Safello says it has seen clear demand for such solutions within a regulated framework since MiCA started to apply.
A company using the solution connects through Safello's API. It therefore does not need its own licence or in-house crypto-asset expertise.
A customer who wants to buy becomes a Safello customer through the company's standard know-your-customer process, in which identity and background are checked under anti-money laundering rules. The customer can then buy crypto assets and transfer them onwards in the same flow.
For Safello, the pilot is about the cost of winning new customers. The company points to a widget it launched in 2018, which delivered the fastest growth in its history.
"In 2018, Safello launched a widget as an acquisition channel for our own platform. It resulted in the fastest growth in the company's history. Crypto checkout is the next step in developing that product, now within the MiCA framework. In a saturated consumer market, we believe this can significantly lower our customer acquisition costs," says Frank Schuil, chief executive of Safello.
Safello is working with an external party on the first pilot case, but does not say who. The solution is also being integrated on bitcoin.se, a platform Safello owns.
The pilot initially covers only the Swedish market. The aim is to gather data on volumes, conversion and customer behaviour before the company decides whether to develop and broaden the offering.
Safello says it is too early to estimate the pilot's financial impact. Because the solution runs on the licensed infrastructure the company already has, Safello expects the initial cost to be limited.
How much revenue it may contribute depends, according to the company, on the number of integrations and on how volumes and conversion rates develop.
Sources: Safello
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