Shakepay Introduces Crypto OTC Trade Desk in Canada

Shakepay holds federal licensing as a money services business and built the OTC service with a Schedule 1 bank as its partner. The desk spent twelve months in pilot before going live. The company also operates a consumer wallet app. The multi-currency, peer-to-peer service lets Canadians buy and sell Bitcoin and Ethereum for Canadian dollars. Accounts verify instantly and users can fund them through Interac e-Transfer, Interac Online, wire transfers, or cryptocurrency. The app includes price alerts and live customer support. In January, Shakepay shut down its Visa debit card offering after Visa told Wave Crest, the card issuer, to cease operations for its prepaid programs.

Amiouny and Roy Breidi founded Shakepay in 2015. The platform has served more than 40,000 clients and processed over CA$30 million in trades. Amiouny told MiningPool that the company's transaction volume and revenue grew by double digits each month. "We are very excited to see that even through the Bitcoin price is down from last year's all-time highs, customer interest in Bitcoin continues to grow," he said.

The company plans to expand. Amiouny said Shakepay will continue seeking "new ways to fulfill our mission to create open access to building wealth." "We do this now with our application that allows Canadians to easily buy and sell bitcoin in under 10 minutes; and Shakepay OTC, our new service for high-value digital currency trades," he said. "We want to keep making this easier and more frictionless for our customers, many of which buy bitcoin week-after-week, dollar-cost-averaging into it for the purpose of long-term holding." The company raised $1 million from Boost VC, Amphora Capital, and angel investors in the prior year.