Founder Story: Aleksei Zakharov from Ottr Finance

Ottr Finance is a mobile wallet that’s bringing the best of web3 finance to non-crypto savvy customers, starting with instant global payments, zero-fee crypto trading, and yield products.

Ottr Finance is a Circle Ventures Portfolio Company. 

Why did you decide to start building Ottr?

I was working at CashApp Crypto, and I experienced how well-designed, consumer-friendly apps bring millions of normal people into crypto. At the same time, I witnessed better technology emerging in the DeFi world that could supplant our existing financial rails. I saw a real opportunity to bridge these two worlds – crypto and consumer finance. I started Ottr to bring DeFi tech into the hands of regular folks and give them a better overall financial experience. 

What is the most important thing you’re solving at Ottr?

The first area where we see blockchain improving on existing financial rails is peer-to-peer payments (P2P), which are instant and global on Ottr. Now, people across the world can access USDC and transact with each other in a more cost-effective manner. An additional benefit is that all payments are decentralized and facilitated directly by the blockchain instead of Ottr as a central custodian. This makes the system more robust and less vulnerable to mismanagement or appropriation by a few institutions.   

Tell us about your vision for mobile wallets in web3.

For web3 adoption, web3 mobile wallets like Ottr need to deliver a better experience than traditional finance. Although P2P payments are our first focus, our goal is to deliver an all-in-one financial app for users –  they’ll be able to invest, participate in crypto capital markets, and use their Ottr balance to make regular purchases. We’re looking for the best web3 technology in these areas to integrate into our product. 

What fundamental crypto innovations are you looking forward to in 2023?

We’d like to see existing financial assets, such as stocks and bonds, being tokenized onto the blockchain. We’ve talked to some people working in this area, but it’s still in the early stages. This could bring better investment opportunities onto the blockchain that we might eventually offer to Ottr users. 

What’s in your roadmap for Ottr over the next 12 months?

We want to make peer-to-peer payments seamless for global users. The last pain point we’re focused on solving is the ability to transfer local currencies onto Ottr wallets, otherwise known as global on-ramps. We’re also vetting sustainable ways to participate in crypto capital markets and are looking to bring a good solution to our product.

What message would you like to share with early stage founders in crypto?

In the past few years, I think it paid off to tap into the more speculative energy within crypto. This delivered easy growth. However, I believe the only path forward is to work on how crypto can solve problems in the real world. Rather than just telling users crypto is the future, we must build great products on crypto that are fundamentally better than what exists.