Fintech firm breaks market barriers plans bay area HQ • St Pete Catalyst

A fintech startup that allows businesses to instantly receive and send payments on purpose in an instant is eyeing the Tampa Bay market for its new headquarters.

CashQ is an embedded cross-border payment platform founded by Alex Voronovich and Arina Anapolskaya. The business-to-business payment platform works by enabling instant international payments with just card credentials or phone numbers. It is linked to institutions, trade unions and large card companies.

– It is slow to send money internationally today, you need an intermediary and there is so much complexity. The market is fragmented, Anapolskaya said. Once, she explained, she tried to wire money to Jamaica to pay contractors, only to find the money was on hold.

“We came up with a product that is simple. You don’t need to download an app or go through complex interfaces. If you are a financial institution, through us, you can add buttons to the software, and by pulling information from your existing customer, the end user can receive money within seconds, she said.

Anapolskaya explained that while the company was founded in Miami, and the founders were eager to be a part of Miami’s booming tech scene, they moved to Cocoa Beach during the height of the pandemic.

“The energy in Miami was insane, but when everything shut down (due to the pandemic), people were upset and were out without masks during the lockdown to retaliate. We decided to go into a smaller downtown to isolate ourselves and focus on finishing our product, and now we plan to move our team to Tampa or St. Pete,” she said, describing the high quality of life in St. Pete and St. Pete. corporate culture in Tampa.

Anapolskaya, who is from Ukraine, said some of their team members currently live in Turkey and CashQ is slowly bringing them into the U.S., including their chief technology officer.

CashQ also hired a compliance specialist and has a team of five contractors they have developed a close relationship with working with the CTO. In St. Pete or Tampa, CashQ will likely operate in a co-working space.

Since launch, CashQ has built a fully operated and licensed money transmitter with payment coverage in over 200 countries, while being integrated into financial institutions, neobanks and card networks such as Visa, UnionPay and mobile money providers and electronic wallets, according to the company. The CashQ founders say they are solving the problem of inefficiency in the $156 trillion cross-border payments market, replacing traditional wire technology.

CashQ was one of 16 startups to graduate from Tampa Bay Wave and the University of South Florida’s inaugural Fintech|X Accelerator program. Anapolskaya said through the accelerator that the founders got to know three different venture capital firms, and two of them plan to invest in CashQ as angel investors.

“This accelerator especially brought in fintech investors, and it helped us create our product even more on demo day,” said Anapolskaya, comparing how investors in the area have already instilled knowledge of working with fintech firms.

Anapolskaya said CashQ hopes to close its pre-seed funding round by September.