Meg Nakamura

Apto Payments is in San Francisco and we also have colleagues in Barcelona, Spain.

We go to bat for new companies trying to change the world in financial services.

We saw tremendous growth in Fintech and specifically challenger banks in Europe.? And with Coinbase we thought that this is an opportunity to challenge some of those banks in Europe and, and globally.

What we really wanted to do was launch the right product for a Coinbase customer.? And just like how you interact with your bank account, we wanted to create a debit card that allows users to spend their cryptocurrency.

The Coinbase card launch was really exciting because it was our first, it was our first launch in Europe.? Firsts are always very exciting.

Meg Nakamura

where we wanted help or advise was really in the area of fundamentally expanding our business into Europe.

It was really hard for us to know what the gold standard is in terms of compliance and designing the right type of a program.

We were introduced to BCLP many years ago here in San Francisco and our partnership with Stan Koppel has been terrific.? And when this opportunity for Coinbase in Europe came along, it was a no brainer to really ask Stan for an introduction to his colleagues in London.

Marcus Pearl

It was quite clear to me when I was first instructed on this matter that there will be a number of challenges for Apto in launching this product in the UK particularly from the regulatory and payments perspective

Louis Whil

One of the key challenges with this project and with projects of this type is that there are multiple parties involved, each with their own regulatory concerns and commercial objectives. The documentation had to satisfy all parties and that meant we had to work with everybody commercial and legal collaboratively and transparently

Kai Zhang

There?s a lot of uncertainty surrounding cryptocurrency that means careful consideration and analysis are needed to make sure Apto is comfortable with their regulatory position

Louis Whil

It was fundamental to our advice that Apto?s position was future-proofed and we did that by ensuring that the documentation was appropriate for other similar card programmes, no matter what the underlying store of value is

Meg Nakamura

The team in London really, really got it and I think that?s a big piece for, for a startup when time is your most precious resource.

So Marcus, Louis, Kai, they got what the opportunity was.? They knew, they could understand how we wanted to differentiate ourselves and they were tremendously helpful

Marcus Pearl

I would advise other fintech companies seeking to do equivalent product launches to that of Apto in the UK or in Europe more generally, to have the right advisers to be able to handle the regulatory aspects, particularly around payments in the UK, this was so state of the art, it was such an innovative product that it needed advisers that are really up for it

Meg Nakamura

Our mission is really to stand up a global issuance platform.? Right now we?re live in the US and in Europe.? We?re very much are working towards the mission of expanding this business so when a customer comes to us, we can issue anywhere around the world.? these products are going to be relevant and certainly BCLP can probably help us navigate each of those expansions.