Case Study

Whalestack's Payments Solutions Empower Merchants to Globalize

Industry

Fintech

Location

European Union (Poland)

Use cases

Stellar Ramps

Business Payments

Cross-border Payments

About

This is Whalestack

Whalestack is a prominent payment processing infrastructure specializing in cryptocurrencies and stablecoins. Its clientele includes e-commerce businesses, fintechs, and traditional payment service providers. Whalestack empowers companies to efficiently manage their payment requirements through a unified multi-blockchain account while ensuring compliance with relevant regulations.

Leveraging the Stellar network, Whalestack functions as a reliable EUR, USDC, Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Lightning on and off-ramp. Established back in 2018, Whalestack is duly registered in Poland, holding a virtual currency service provider license within the European Union.

Challenge

Globalized Commerce Compliance

As business becomes increasingly globalized and omnichannel, merchants, fintechs, and financial institutions want to conduct fast, affordable, and scalable transactions in multiple currencies, including cryptocurrency. However, because regulations surrounding the usage of cryptocurrency vary country-by-country, these groups find it difficult to understand how to keep their businesses compliant while serving a global audience.

Solution

Easy Crypto Payments

After hearing how merchants, fintechs, and financial institutions were becoming increasingly receptive to cryptocurrency, Whalestack set out to build an all-in-one platform where:

  • Merchants can accept payments in both crypto and fiat.
  • Fintechs, financial service providers, banks, and more can extend their payment rails with crypto and stablecoins payment methods.

Whalestack's key payment features encompass crypto checkouts, deposits, swaps, and transfers, offering seamless crypto acquiring, exchange, settlement, and disbursement within secure custodial wallets. With an automated payment exception handling system and protection against currency volatility, Whalestack's solution also boasts a comprehensive refund mechanism.

When considering what blockchain would best support their robust solution and facilitate transactions at high speeds and low costs, Whalestack ultimately decided to build on the Stellar network.

Interoperability

Interoperability

  • Aware that merchants worldwide would want to use their product, Whalestack prioritized developing on a blockchain that could support transacting in multiple fiat and digital currencies.
  • On the Stellar network, financial institutions can issue assets that represent any form of value and establish ramps that allow value to move on and off the network. These institutions are called anchors.
  • By integrating with multiple Stellar anchors, Whalestack can now easily facilitate intra and cross-border transactions in the merchant’s pre-selected currency.
Low Fees and Speed

Low Fees and Speed

  • For merchants who want to scale their businesses, transaction fees on traditional payment systems can grow prohibitively expensive. As transactions scale and settle on the Stellar network, the fee remains extremely low – less than a fraction of a USD cent.
  • Since settlement time is so quick on the Stellar network, Whalestack is able to ensure that a conversion from a price-volatile currency – such as crypto – will pay out to the amount of fiat that merchants expect.
Ease of Use

Ease of Use

Whalestack emphasizes user-friendliness, providing comprehensive software developer kits (SDKs), code examples in several programming languages, API documentation, and shopping cart plugins. Once the REST API or plugin is fully integrated with their checkout page, merchants can instantly take advantage of Stellar’s payment rails to accept crypto and fiat.

Transparency

Transparency

The Stellar network reaches consensus and updates the ledger with the latest set of transactions every few seconds. This data is then routed to Whalestack's platform, ensuring an accurate and up-to-date transaction history that merchants can reliably consult to keep track of payments.

Low fees, the transaction speed, and the ability to interoperate with anchors were the main reasons why the Stellar network was our top choice. We needed a blockchain that gave us the confidence to be able to scale our digital payments business in the long haul and we found it here.

Stefan Schneider, Co-Founder Whalestack

Developer Documentation

Dive into the docs

On and off-ramps are core to transferring value between fiat and digital assets on the Stellar network. As the number of on and off-ramps on the Stellar network continues to grow, there are more payment services than ever for digital wallets to connect to. Explore our developer documentation to discover how.

Stellar Ramps enables wallets to seamlessly plug into these on and off-ramp services without needing to customize an integration with each individual anchor. Instead, they can leverage the Stellar network’s interoperable standard for on and off-ramping to access MoneyGram’s cash-to-crypto deposit and withdrawal services.

Results

Impact

To be the go-to payments solution for merchants, Whalestack has built additional features on its platform on top of the transaction settlement and real-time conversion services it offers. Right now, the platform includes analytics and tax-keeping data so businesses can stay compliant. To stay organized, Whalestack also has automated invoicing and financial reporting features, balance sheet tracking, and account statements.

Whalestack explores new payment features for vendors, employees beyond customers. To enhance crypto availability on the Stellar network, it plans to be an anchor, issue assets, and provide ramps. Whalestack's white-label solution enables cross-border transactions, expanding global crypto payment options for various financial services.

500+

Merchants onboarded

+105%

Transactions YoY

Merchants are interested in adopting new digital currencies, but it can seem overwhelming at first. When they experience how Whalestack removes the complexities of integrating with multiple blockchains and provides settlement in their desired currencies, their sentiment turns positive quickly.

Marcin Olszowy, Co-Founder Whalestack

Connect

Want to know more?

Contact us today to learn how your business can use Stellar to enable frictionless cross-border payment services and how the Stellar Development Foundation can help.

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