Early-stage investment firm Antler Australia recently backed a new cohort of startups as part of its ongoing program to build great local tech companies.

Startup Daily shares the details of each venture in the “Antler Investor Memos” series, which is designed to give you a quick, incisive insight into the startups and people involved, with many seeking follow-up capital beyond the initial pre-seed investment from Antler.

Company: Syrax

Date of incorporation: 2022

Stage of business: Pre-seeding

founders: Sanjeev Rao and Babak Rafat

Current investors: antlers

Currently increase: Yes

Company

Despite the recent turbulence, the emergence of cryptocurrency as a viable payment method continues as blockchain becomes an increasingly robust alternative to legacy systems. According to the Independent Reserve Cryptocurrency Index.

All the while, growth in payments is expected to continue at a level compound annual growth rate of 21.5% by 2026.

A decentralized cryptocurrency payment solution, Syrax, is a multi-chain crypto payment gateway for secure transactions on the blockchain, allowing users and merchants to send and receive payments directly. By doing so, it ensures that there is non-custodial ownership of a third party, meaning that individuals’ assets are protected.

As it stands, it is often complicated for individuals to make secure cryptocurrency payments directly to merchants as centralized providers require ‘Know Your Customer’ (KYC) information, while merchants often have reservations about holding cryptocurrencies due to liquidity problems.

Syrax offers an agnostic cryptocurrency payment experience with full interoperability for an individual to link their wallet and cryptocurrencies of choice.

The user experience at checkout is fast and hassle-free, and merchants can receive stablecoins or Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) to ease any concerns about the stability of payments received. For merchants accepting cryptocurrency payments, payment time per transaction instantly minimizes cash flow concerns while removing chargeback issues caused by fraudulent activity.

Antler investment thesis

“Syrax’s decentralized and custodial-free payment solution is an attractive offering within the evolving cryptocurrency landscape. The interoperability of the product provides merchants with a seamless conversion path at checkout, removing the friction of traditional lengthy KYC processes,” said Cath Rogers, Partner at Antler Australia.

“Our belief in the founding team stems from Sanjeev and Babak’s extensive experience within the payments and e-commerce industry, coupled with impressive pilot projects secured within months of our initial investment.”

Traction/milestones

Since securing Antler’s initial investment late last year, Syrax has secured two pilot projects with e-commerce and marketplace partners, while several other national partnership discussions are underway.

Syrax has engaged a number of major financial institutions in high-level talks to integrate their CBDCs. This will be an important part of several pilot programs that determine how they will interact with customers and other cryptocurrencies.

Latest financing

Pre-seeding antlers

Use of Funds

With Antler’s Pre-Seed funding, Syrax has doubled its engineering capabilities to develop its MVP and maintain its pilot projects. In addition to strengthening the direct sales pipeline and go-to-market strategy.

Syrax continues to refine its product features ahead of upcoming pilot projects. From here the focus will shift to the development of new payment functions and business tools.

The founders say

“Our vision for Syrax is to be a leading provider of decentralized cryptocurrency payments. We believe that ease of use and non-custodial payments are the first steps towards user trust. Being a non-custodial third party, ownership remains with the user,” said Sanjeev Rao, co-founder of Syrax.

“Syrax is a wallet and crypto agnostic for a reason. We know that some users only want to use decentralized cryptocurrencies. We know that some sellers will only use a CBDC or stablecoin. In addition, Syrax needs to be customizable to differentiate our use case so that users can ultimately decide how to make payments.

“And with that, we see Syrax as a complete payment solution for any form of cryptocurrency payment.

“With extensive experience in the retail, e-commerce and payments industries, we purpose-built Syrax to be globally scalable from day one with a unique advantage in the payments landscape.

“We have been incredibly fortunate to have Antler’s guidance, support and investment.”

What’s next?

Antler, an early-stage global VC, is revealing all of its latest investments in aspiring Australian founders and startups. With over 100 investments in early stage companies, Syrax is one of the most recent portfolio companies.

• StartupDaily is Antler’s official media partner in Australia.