Interview: Zoid Pay

The MultiversX Ecosystem is full of great projects backed by founders and teams with inspiring and exciting stories. Once a week, we sit down with some of these individuals to ask about their projects, so you can learn more about them and get better insights into these fantastic initiatives.

In today’s interview, we spoke with Eduard Oneci, Co-founder & CEO at ZoidPay.

Hello Eduard, thank you for your time. It’s a pleasure to discuss your project with you! First, can you please tell us more about yourself and your background?

Hi. Thanks for reaching out. I’m Eduard, the CEO and Co-founder of ZoidPay. I've been pretty much on an entrepreneurial journey since I was 16. After earning a double degree in Business Management and Information Technology, with a specialization in Engineering and Data Science, I've been pretty much on an entrepreneurial journey. That's taken me from starting a digital agency and web development studio to having built Rewordly, Cardanti, and finally ZoidPay.

Can you tell us more about ZoidPay, where the idea came from, and what’s the project’s purpose?

A techie at heart, I have been enthralled by the potential of blockchain tech since early 2016. Commitments to other projects, however, meant I could only dive deep into the space in 2017-2018. However, alongside, the passion for the underlying tech only kept growing. The potential of blockchain in making something so widely used, like digital payments, got me thinking. That drove the setting up of ZoidPay. ZoidPay was essentially set up as a full-service crypto payments platform. It's been a long winding journey since. While we've stayed true to what we are building, we've now taken that a step further - actually, a lot more steps further. We are now striving to establish ZoidPay as the go-to open architecture for building the next generation of Web3 financial services.

We are aiming to make Web3 accessible to retail and business. Hence, in the coming months, we are readying to roll out a Super App that gives people the opportunity to access all of their crypto and traditional financial services in one app. I would not shy away from saying that we are aiming to take on some of the biggies in this space, including Revolut. On the B2B side, we'll be launching a suite of APIs and SDKs that will let any company across any industry make the transformation from Web2 to Web3 easily and cost-effectively.

What is the utility of your native token, $ZPAY?

The ZPAY token has been built with utility at the core. It is an essential part of everything we are doing and building at ZoidPay. To give you an idea, I mentioned the B2B services earlier. Clients opting to pay with ZPAY will be able to avail of the APIs and SDKs at a discounted rate. Payments, benefits, staking opportunities, access to product launches - all of it comes with rewards for ZPAY token holders.

You recently launched ZoidPay Farms. Can you tell us more about the launch and how the token $WAND will be integrated into your project?

The ZoidPay farms are another way for ZPAY token holders to earn passive income. Starting February 1st, we launched two programs that let one earn rewards in the form of a passive income in our ZPAY and upcoming WAND tokens. Participation in the farms has been significant in the initial days since launch. To give you an idea, the ZPAY farms give an APY of 30%, while the APY on the WAND farm can be up to 1500%. There are tons of benefits from participating in the farms, which go beyond these returns. Those providing liquidity to the ZPAY - EGLD pair and participating in the farms during the first two weeks of launch even earn a spot on the whitelist for the WAND sale, a chance to participate in the sale of our next NFT launch later this year, and more.

I just recently put out a tweet about WAND's role in the ZoidPay ecosystem. It is essentially going to be a canary network on ZoidPay, quite like Kusama when it comes to Polkadot. Putting that differently, WAND will be the main Sandbox for ZoidPay experimental features, launchpad, and DEX for anyone that wants to build on top of our B2B offerings and path to revenue by listing in the App Marketplace.

Our token sale will be launching soon, and I'd encourage anyone interested to keep a check at https://wand.zoidpay.com/ to stay updated.

Can you tell us more about the ZoidPay Card? When do you plan to launch it, and what can we expect?

The ZoidPay virtual cards have been available on our browser extension for over a year, essentially letting you shop with crypto from any merchant globally. The way it works is that you top up your account with crypto, and we instantly issue you a Visa / MasterCard debit card with the FIAT equivalent of your card.

What we are currently gearing up to roll out this year are physical cards that will let you spend your crypto instantly at PoS. A lot of this will be rolled-out alongside the launch of the Super App, which is going to be a massive milestone along our growth journey. We have recently partnered up with one of the biggest card manufacturers - I cannot provide any more details here for obvious reasons. But it's going to be great. You can expect metal cards, among others, and we even recently announced plans to launch customized cards engraved with our Zoidster NFTs.

So what’s next for ZoidPay? How do you envision fitting into the future of what the MultiversX Ecosystem has in store?

The love we've received from within the MultiversX Ecosystem over the last year since we migrated to ESDT has been amazing. The MultiversX community has welcomed us with open arms, and it has been fun. We've partnered with so many exciting projects within this ecosystem.

What's next for ZoidPay is our plan to go cross-chain. I'm a strong believer that the future of blockchain is cross-chain. As I said recently, limitations create walls, not adoption. Interoperability is key. So, we plan to scale up to other chains, and one of the first will be Ethereum. This flexibility and reach allow us to scale at 10x speed.

Thank you for your time Eduard, and all the interesting insight! Anything else you want to add?

2023 is BIG for us. We have lots planned, and irrespective of market conditions, we plan to build full throttle. We are scaling up our team like never before, and our roadmap is packed. There will be instances of delays or roadblocks that we run into, and that's the nature of the game - but our focus remains on what we have set out to achieve. Your support, and the support of every community member, goes a long way in boosting the morale of the team. We promise to be transparent every step of the way. We ask you for your patience, and we will make it happen!

Thanks a lot for your time Eduard, and best of luck with your project!

If you have any questions for him, please comment below.