Bankera Delivers on ICO Promises: Milestone Achievements

The project has been implemented in strict adherence to the Terms and Conditions together with ICO participation agreement accepted by BNK token buyers, maintaining the status of BNK as a utility token. While the vision set forth in our whitepaper was ambitious, the delivery has been broadly consistent with reasonable expectations, especially considering the evolving regulatory landscape of the sector. Crucially, Bankera has met its obligations and continues to pursue long-term commitments. The ecosystem approach has been central to this success. Although composed of separate legal entities, our network of companies works in unison to deliver the comprehensive product suite promised to our community.

From the early stages, we prioritized utility for our token holders. We successfully implemented the ability to pay for Bankera’s services using BNK tokens, allowing users to unlock promotional pricing such as reduced account application fees, coverage for BankingLab services, and advantageous pricing at SpectroCoin. Furthermore, adhering to our early commitments, we made available free-of-charge SpectroCoin payment cards to BNK token holders who contributed 1000 EUR or more during the ICO. These initial steps laid the groundwork for a broader integration of the token within our services.

A cornerstone of our delivery has been the establishment of robust payment infrastructure through UAB Pervesk, an Electronic Money Institution, which is delivering Bankera’s products via an authorized agent in Malta Era Finance Ltd. This has enabled us to offer comprehensive payment accounts and services, including SEPA Instant and SWIFT transfers, mass payments, and API-controlled accounts. We have also rolled out a mobile app (available at Apple App Store and Google Play), recurring payments, and multi-currency support, ensuring our clients have access to top-tier banking capabilities. Concurrently, we solidified our position in the crypto space by continuing to provide crypto brokerage and crypto payment services through SpectroCoin, maintaining our bridge between traditional finance and the crypto economy.

Innovation has remained at the forefront of our development strategy. We are particularly proud of our business financing product, which received high-level recognition when the Bankera team became a winner of the European Commission’s COVID hackathon for developing a solution to aid businesses during the pandemic. This spirit of innovation extends to our lending services, where crypto-backed loans are now fully supported on SpectroCoin, providing flexible liquidity options for digital asset holders.

On the technical and regulatory front, we went beyond the original promises of the whitepaper to ensure the sustainability of the project. In response to a changing competitive and regulatory environment, we developed AutoKYC, a proprietary tool that gives us full control over the client onboarding experience while optimizing AML processes. Furthermore, we acquired and further developed BankingLab Core to secure complete control over our software stack and user experience, a technology that is now trusted by over ten other fintech companies. We also built essential infrastructure components like the payment service connector Restfulpay and the authorization service Authrails, which are utilized extensively within the Bankera ecosystem and provided to third parties.

Our capabilities in the card market have grown exponentially. UAB Pervesk has achieved Principal Member status with both VISA and MasterCard for payment card issuing and acquiring. This allows us to support cash withdrawals with Bankera’s cards at ATMs worldwide and offer modern conveniences like Apple Pay and Google Pay support. Looking ahead, we are expanding our merchant solutions. While we already facilitate crypto payments acquiring through SpectroCoin, we are set to launch payment card acquiring in the near future, with open banking account-to-account payments acquiring to follow shortly after via UAB Pervesk.

Only a fractional portion of the promised outcomes remains a work in progress. Specifically, loans (apart from the aforementioned business and crypto-backed products), savings, and investment products are dependent on obtaining a full banking license. As this process is rigorous and time-consuming, these services will require a few more years to finalize. However, these items were not bound by specific deadlines in the ICO documentation, and we remain actively dedicated to achieving them.

Reflecting on this journey, Martin St-Hilaire, one of the advisors of Bankera ICO, noted that the achievements validates the team's resilience and dedication. He emphasized that building a regulated financial ecosystem is a marathon, not a sprint, and expressed gratitude to the community for their continued trust as the project evolves to meet new challenges and opportunities.

We invite you to experience the Bankera ecosystem firsthand. Individuals and businesses can access our payment services and crypto-backed loans by signing up directly at Bankera or SpectroCoin. For enterprise clients interested in leveraging our white-label banking technology or compliance solutions, please visit BankingLab and AutoKYC to submit an inquiry and connect with our dedicated teams.