In 2020, AstroPay was only a checkout solution—a button on a web page that allowed you to pay for items. Since bringing on new CEO Marc Sacal—whose extensive financial background includes co-founding Arcus, a payments company that raised over $20 million in VC funding before being acquired by Mastercard, as well as experience at Goldman Sachs—AstroPay has grown into a global wallet with millions of users worldwide.
The company’s vision is to make cross-border finance as easy as possible, with a particular focus on digital nomads and freelancers who work internationally.
“Our ultimate goal is to build a global bank where access to financial services isn’t limited by the currency you use or where you live. The world is becoming increasingly digital, and we’re ensuring banking keeps up,” says Sacal.
Copenhagen will be AstroPay’s European base
Sacal strategically set his sights on Denmark—and specifically Copenhagen—for AstroPay’s European base because of the zone’s “global-first” approach and its ability to attract global talent.
“I lived in Copenhagen for a year, and the international community there is remarkable. Denmark’s compact size drives organic integration of people from all over the world, giving it an inherently global mindset and making it an ideal base for AstroPay,” he says.
When the World Bank ran its renowned Doing Business Report, Denmark consistently ranked as the top easiest country to do business in, snatching the number one spot for nine consecutive years. The country is known for its highly innovative environment and strong infrastructure.
Investments in fintech are booming in Denmark, with Q1 2024 attracting more investments into fintech than the entirety of 2023. Despite the risk-averse attitude experienced globally in 2023 for fintech investment, Denmark still outperformed its two neighbours. Fintech investment into Denmark in 2023 made up a total of 37.5% of all fintech investments in the Nordics for that year.
“The future of banking must be global-first, real-time, and currency-agnostic, ensuring that work, travel, and finance move seamlessly across borders. AstroPay is building that future”
Marc Sacal, CEO at Astropay
The number of people working in fintech experienced 6X growth between 2015 and 2022, making fintech even larger than the insurance industry.
During Sacal’s time in Copenhagen, he grew impressed by the combination of strong work ethic and international culture in the city. Denmark’s central positioning is also favorable, attracting the best talent from the Baltics, Northern Europe, and Scandinavia.
The Institute for Management Development (IMD), an independent academic institution from Switzerland, prepares a global talent ranking report each year. The report looks at Talent Competitiveness between 67 countries, based on 31 indicators and three categories. The categories include how much the country invests in talent development, how much appeal it has for overseas talent, and the degree of availability it has for competencies in the talent pool.
In its 2024 report, IMD ranked Denmark number five globally, beating Germany, the USA, and the EU average by far.
AstroPay also chose Denmark due to its regulatory clarity and speed-to-market advantages, which will help ensure compliance while quickly expanding financial services responsibly. The company has secured an EMI license in Denmark, enabling it to offer key financial services under strict regulatory oversight.
The EMI license allows AstroPay to operate within a well-defined framework, ensuring transparency and consumer protection. For services beyond the EMI’s scope, AstroPay will collaborate with licensed banking-as-a-service providers, maintaining full adherence to European financial regulation.
Sacal was also impressed by what he calls Denmark’s “design thinking” and how products in the region focus on usability and seamless integration. “The place we intend on winning is in AstroPay’s design features, and how beautiful and seamless the app is,” he says.
The statement is reminiscent of Steve Jobs’s approach, whose relentless search for beautiful design and excellent user experience has often been cited as the driving force behind the iPhone’s success—and Apple’s turnaround from a struggling company into the global empire it is today.
The problem with global banking today
The global workforce is undergoing a transformation, says Sacal, with digital work untethering people from traditional financial systems. Today, 28% of the global workforce is remote, up from just 12% a decade ago, and 1.5 billion people are freelancers, half of whom work with clients across borders.
This shift is fueling an explosion in demand for borderless financial services. Meanwhile, 18% of global GDP is now digital, reflecting a world where people increasingly earn, spend, and move money online.
“However, financial infrastructure remains outdated—global payments are slow, costly, and riddled with friction. The future of banking must be global-first, real-time, and currency-agnostic, ensuring that work, travel, and finance move seamlessly across borders. AstroPay is building that future,” says Sacal.
AstroPay’s global wallet allows users to send money to each other easily and rapidly in more than 10 currencies. The company offers personal and business solutions, facilitating payments through payment links, QR codes, and wallet-to-wallet payments. It also supports a variety of local payment methods, and merchants can accept AstroPay directly on their websites.
Plenty of room for new players
AstroPay’s entrance into a market with several dominant players such as Revolut and Wise is bold. However, Sacal believes that plenty of room exists for new entrants. “The total addressable market of this space is huge. It’s like saying that Barclays and HSBC can’t co-exist. That’s impossible,” he says.
AstroPay also brings a unique focus—the digital nomad and international freelancer. Every aspect of its design and experience aims to address this segment of users more heavily than any other player.
“We’re focusing a lot on our ideal customer profile, the digital nomad. These are usually content creators or freelancers working abroad,” Sacal says.
He describes an example of a content creator streaming live on a platform who then puts up an AstroPay QR code to accept payments, allowing people to pay in their own currency while the creator receives it in their currency.
“Our go-to-market strategy, focus, and design is very much focused towards that user profile,” he says.
Seeking partnerships
AstroPay is actively seeking new partners in three distinct categories: Banking, merchants, and enablers.
The banking partners will allow AstroPay to provide further banking services, such as IBAN accounts.
Merchants who sign up for AstroPay would be able to accept payments from AstroPay users, which Sacal says is much cheaper than card payments and other wallets like PayPal.
Under the enablers category fall any partners interested in creating something of mutual value. For example, AstroPay recently partnered with payroll and HR giant Deel so that Deel can pay contractors and employees using AstroPay.
“We did a soft launch in Denmark and we are now ready to start building for Europe. Once we have the partnerships in place, we’ll start the marketing machine in Europe,” he says.