CoinsPaid has remained a leader in crypto payments for the iGaming industry for more than 10 years. Today, the company is taking its next strategic step as it expands beyond its traditional markets and builds new partnerships with institutional players and major financial organizations.
Much of this effort is driven by Murat Prokopov, Strategic Partnerships Executive at CoinsPaid. His mission is to establish trust with companies that have long steered clear of crypto payments.
In this interview with CP Media, he talks about the specifics of the work, the challenges, the professional tactics, and how cryptocurrencies are perceived in the business community.
Trust as the Cornerstone of Strategic Partnerships
What unique challenges do you see in building strategic partnerships among players in the crypto industry, FinTech companies, and traditional businesses?
Within the crypto industry, the biggest challenge is excessive competition and the misalignment of roadmaps. This often prevents companies from joining forces. We see the solution in modular integrations and in dividing roles based on core strengths.
The challenges are even greater when working with traditional businesses. For a long time, many payment systems and financial providers deliberately stayed away from cryptocurrencies, often as a leadership-level policy. That’s changing. When companies begin to reconsider their stance, it’s crucial to be ready for a constructive dialogue.
The core issue is the persistent perception of crypto as something experimental. CoinsPaid is working to change that view by presenting cryptocurrency payments as a mature and reliable instrument of global finance.
Trust is the cornerstone of any relationship, and in crypto and Web3 companies, the lack of it can sometimes feel particularly sharp. How does your team overcome skepticism and build trust with potential partners?
In traditional business, trust in crypto companies is far from a given. Building it requires speaking the language of your counterpart, explaining concepts that may seem basic to us, and addressing potential concerns upfront. Openness and the willingness to acknowledge weak spots are the foundation for helping others accept our vision of the future of payments.
Trust, however, isn’t built by words alone. Context matters. Meeting at an industry conference is one thing. Being invited to a closed-door event is another. Choosing the right moment and the right setting for the conversation is critical.
Another key factor is communication style. Mastering corporate language shows that you understand the environment and the mindset of potential partners. At the same time, it’s important to remain genuine and engaging, the kind of person people enjoy sharing a room with. In the end, personal chemistry often becomes the deciding factor in building trust.
Can you share an example of a successful partnership that started with serious challenges or skepticism and how you managed to overcome them?
I can’t disclose company names, since a number of negotiations haven’t yet gone public. What I can say is that in recent months, we’ve been engaged in productive discussions with major players in banking payments and Banking-as-a-Service providers. With them, you can’t rely on numbers alone. Big figures aren’t the main indicator of trust when industries are this different.
Our approach is based on openness and a consultative format. We don’t walk in with a ready-made pitch that says “buy from us.” Instead, we share the expertise and insights we’ve accumulated over 11 years in the business. We show that we understand the specifics and the risks, and that we’re ready to adapt our product to banking infrastructure. This approach opens doors even where skepticism still runs high.
Breaking Down Barriers to Cryptocurrency Adoption
What operational pain points do potential partners most often face when integrating crypto processing solutions, and how do you help address them during onboarding and ongoing collaboration?
When it comes to operational challenges, onboarding in our field is rarely quick. The process involves significant automation and solution customization, and that’s something we’re constantly working on.
But in new areas for us, the focus shifts away from technology and toward understanding how our business is structured and where it can add value. For banks and service providers, crypto processing often looks like a high-risk zone. They don’t always know where to position such solutions, and that’s what raises the most questions.
That’s why we take an approach more common in consulting. First, we share our experience and show how we’ve solved specific problems across different segments. We also highlight mistakes made in the past and focus on how to account for them during integration.
It’s critical to stay realistic and offer partners only what truly meets their needs. And if there’s no real demand in the market for a particular feature, it’s better to say so openly. This approach reduces friction and makes collaboration more transparent and comfortable for both sides.
Beyond operational issues, are there financial or regulatory barriers your partners often encounter, and how do your strategic partnerships help minimize them?
Financial and regulatory barriers have become a decisive factor for partners from traditional industries. The world is changing fast: new rules are emerging across different countries, and the crypto industry is becoming increasingly transparent. Still, for companies far removed from this space, it’s extremely difficult to navigate the terminology, distinctions, and levels of risk.
That’s where we step in as a guide. Our role is to explain what new regulatory practices mean, how they affect the integration of payment solutions, and how to minimize the related risks. Each region develops its own approach to regulation, but in any case, we see our mission as making compliance processes easier for our partners.
Expertise alone isn’t enough. What also matters is the willingness to adapt our product to banking infrastructure standards. Our goal is to make crypto services appear not as an additional risk factor but as a solution embedded into familiar compliance frameworks. This reduces barriers and speeds up the transition from cautious interest to practical collaboration.
Technological compatibility is another key factor. How do you assess a potential partner’s readiness, and what tools do you use to ensure seamless integration?
Technological compatibility is an area where we take most of the burden on ourselves. Our goal is to make the complex simple and remove unnecessary barriers from the process. We rely on industry standards and proven solutions so that partners can see our product as a natural part of their infrastructure.
When working with large banks and providers, we go even further by adapting crypto processing to their integration models. For some, it resembles an app store that allows them to plug in a new module with ease. For others, it means working at the core software level, which requires much closer collaboration. In both cases, the goal is the same: for our product to function as an organic solution embedded into their existing technology stack.
We don’t expect partners to adapt to us. On the contrary, our mission is to make crypto processing a ready-to-use option they can activate without unnecessary risk or excessive effort.
Flexibility and Strategy: What Makes Partnerships Valuable
In the FinTech industry, the pace of change is incredibly fast. How do you adapt your processes for identifying and selecting partners to keep up with shifting market and tech conditions?
It’s true that change in financial technology is happening at a rapid pace. We adapt through a combination of two approaches: operational and strategic.
On the one hand, we closely monitor signals from the market. When banks or major FinTech companies launch crypto services, we don’t treat it as competition. Instead, we see it as an indicator that the topic is becoming relevant to them, and we approach with an offer of expertise.
On the other hand, we recognize that many financial initiatives develop over the course of several years. That’s why it’s important for us not only to respond quickly but also to have a presence in the right ecosystems, whether through partner programs with large providers or niche industry events organized by giants like SWIFT. This lays the groundwork for future projects.
At the same time, we remain flexible. Even against positive trends, skepticism persists in face-to-face meetings, and our task is to tailor arguments to the specific context. The balance between quick decisions and long-term planning allows us to move forward with confidence in constantly changing conditions.
What success metrics do you use to evaluate the effectiveness of strategic partnerships? What’s your definition of a truly successful collaboration?
The effectiveness of strategic partnerships can’t be measured by financial metrics alone. Of course, in the end, we want to see new products and business initiatives as outcomes, but there are other key indicators along the way.
First, there’s the level of trust. When traditional companies are not only ready to discuss cryptocurrency payments with us but also willing to launch joint public projects or develop products that combine traditional finance with crypto, that’s already a sign of success.
Second, access itself matters. Sometimes the real win isn’t a signed contract but the chance to sit at the same table with major players. These opportunities open doors for future initiatives.
And finally, the value of partnerships is measured in knowledge. Every dialogue with banks and large providers gives us insight into their processes, challenges, and expectations. The more we can embed that experience into the evolution of our products, the more successful our partnership strategy becomes.
From a global perspective, what do you see as the main drivers for building partnerships in the FinTech industry?
The motives behind building partnerships in the FinTech industry largely depend on which side of the table you’re on. For industry players, it’s primarily about expanding their service portfolios. Joint projects make it possible to offer clients comprehensive solutions, even if that means combining the efforts of several companies. The motivation here is clear: business growth and diversification.
For traditional finance and e-commerce, the key driver is access to a new payment method that solves old problems. Cryptocurrency delivers transaction speed, transparency, and an audit trail. It lowers costs by eliminating intermediaries and proves especially effective in cross-border payments, where legacy systems have long been constrained.
Still, it’s critical that partnerships are based on real needs, not on the idea of doing something new for novelty’s sake. When crypto projects move beyond a community of enthusiasts and start addressing concrete business challenges, the motives for collaboration become self-evident.
Partnerships at the Core of the New Financial Ecosystem
How do you see the FinTech industry evolving over the next three to five years? What trends do you expect to dominate?
Over the next 3 to 5 years, regulation and standardization will dominate FinTech, particularly the payments industry. This will inevitably lead to a gradual convergence with traditional finance, as cryptocurrency solutions integrate into established systems and stop being perceived as marginal or experimental.
We’re already seeing regulatory processes in Europe become a driver of growth, where the introduction of rules signals recognition of the industry itself. The U.S. is taking a more open approach, allowing greater experimentation and product development. In both cases, the trend is clear: crypto processing is becoming part of the financial infrastructure.
The impact of neural networks and artificial intelligence deserves special attention. It’s still difficult to predict every form of application, but it’s clear that AI will transform both financial services and user interactions. For example, Cloudflare, a global leader in cloud solutions, recently announced the NET Dollar, a dollar-backed stablecoin designed for use by AI agents. Another tech giant, Google, unveiled the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), an open framework enabling AI agents to securely execute transactions on behalf of users. Artificial intelligence will influence every segment of the market, including payments.
Finally, can you share your thoughts on how Web3 partnerships influence product development? Do they help drive broader adoption of Web3 technologies?
Partnerships have a direct impact on product development. They help filter out solutions that exist “because we can” and focus attention on what the market truly demands. This filter makes products more mature and practical, reducing the risk of creating technology for its own sake.
The most obvious function of cryptocurrency is payments. Payments are what drive the market forward today and serve as the engine of mass adoption. Through partnerships, we can not only advance payment solutions but also integrate them into new ecosystems, from banking providers to international payment networks. This doesn’t just expand our product. It helps set standards for the entire industry.
Partnerships also open doors to more conservative segments of the market. Companies that would never have entered the crypto space on their own begin to view it as part of the financial infrastructure. This is the path to mass adoption—from niche solutions for enthusiasts to products that become an ordinary part of business and daily life.
CoinsPaid is one of the largest and most experienced players in the crypto payments market. Over the past decade, we’ve directly and indirectly helped millions of people use cryptocurrencies for payments. Today, we continue working to eliminate UX barriers and make crypto payments as simple, convenient, and above all, as familiar as traditional payment instruments. That’s where we deliberately invest both money and time. It’s a long road, but we believe such investments are essential for driving mass adoption of crypto.
