C OV E R STO RY
MONEY NEW BEGINNINGS ISSUE
When speed is of the essence Entropay is one of the success stories you have probably never heard about. Mark Anthony Spiteri, its chief operating officer, believes the time has come to change that. How did Entropay get its start in Malta?
Can you tell us more about the products Entropay is building here?
and exciting development, not just within our
Entropay cards are virtual Visa cards, which you can
We’re serious about speed, and it affects everything
instantly create in sterling, dollars or euro. They’re
we do at Entropay. The people that power our
We were a small team based here in Malta at a time
reloadable, and you can also delete them after just
products relentlessly shave milliseconds off loading
when the latest payment technologies were not always
one use to protect yourself from fraud. Using the
speeds and response times, so the people who use
available and advancements moved slowly. We couldn’t
newest Visa Direct and Mastercard MoneySend
our products can spend their time in a smarter way.
just wait for someone else to solve our problem, so we
technologies, we have just disrupted the disruptors
set out to speed up a solution.
with the beta release of Entropay Transfers, an
industry but for anyone who sends money (which is practically everyone!)
Every product starts with a problem. Ours was simple: online payments should be universally accessible.
Part of the Ixaris Group, Entropay was founded in 2003 by Alex Mifsud to provide online payments to everyone, regardless of their location or
instant money transfer product. Finally, Entropay
On that note, why haven’t we heard about Entropay before?
Enterprise is our whitelabel transfers product, built for some of the world’s biggest brands.
Entropay has definitely flown under the radar. In hindsight, I think we have been Malta’s secret tech
Disrupted the disruptors? How exactly?
success story. However, together with Entropay’s
internet’s history book, introducing the first virtual
The average bank transfer takes one day to receive.
visibility to brands doing something different in
Visa cards in Europe. And 8.8 million cards and 15
Many fintech apps take three days to send or
Malta, supporting sustainable growth in our local IT
years later, we’ve found our niche in the make-or-break
receive money. Entropay transfers take less than 30
scene and pushing innovation through our financial
global gaming sector, where we developed the kind
seconds: that’s 2,880 times faster than a SEPA bank
sector. This is why we’ve decided to shout louder
of unprecedented fraud-fighting system that today’s
transfer, and up to 8,600 times faster than other
about the genuinely interesting and impactful things
fintech apps can only aspire to achieve.
fintech products. We consider this a very significant
we’ve been doing at Entropay.
creditworthiness. It was a lonely time to be an internet business - Facebook, Gmail and YouTube didn’t exist yet! - but an exciting one. We added our line to the
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Executive Chairman David Sear and CCO Aran Brown, I believe it is important to give a voice and