Wirex: Taking crypto mainstream with Google Maps Platform

October 2008: a global recession is eroding trust in the world economy. Banks are being bailed out by central governments. And a new technological innovation called cryptocurrency is promising nothing short of a revolution: to do away with the traditional finance system, taking currencies out of the hands of banks and governments, and placing them into the hands of the people.

Fast forward to today, and far from having supplanted traditional finance, cryptocurrency is instead taking large strides into the mass market, helped by increasing interoperability between the crypto sector and conventional finance. Global cryptocurrency revenue is now projected to reach $38bn in 2023, growing at an annual rate of 14.4% to reach $65bn by 2027.

"The crypto industry moves in cycles," explains Pavel Matveev, CEO and Co-Founder of Wirex, one of the leaders in the crypto payments space. "First comes the crypto hype, which creates a bubble. Then the bubble pops and we enter crypto winter. But with every cycle, the market expands, with more people holding cryptocurrency and more people spending it. We're not yet in the mainstream, but we will probably enter the mainstream with the next cycle."

A financially regulated, crypto-native FinTech company, which uses Google Maps Platform to provide enriched transaction data, Wirex has made it its mission to bridge the gap between conventional and digital currency and encourage the mainstream adoption of the digital economy.

As the creator of the world's first crypto-enabled payment card, Wirex works directly with both Visa and MasterCard to allow its six million users to spend cryptocurrency with more than 50 million merchants around the world. And with features such as Cryptoback™, which enables users to earn cryptocurrency every time they make a traditional currency payment, Wirex is helping to make cryptocurrency even more accessible to the mass market.

Building trust with clearer transaction data

With its seven-year track record in the crypto space, its fully licensed and regulated status, and many industry awards, Wirex has worked hard to build trust in its brand and in cryptocurrency generally. However, when it came to having clear and comprehensive information about their transactions, users of the Wirex app found it difficult to get a clear picture about where certain transactions had been made, and with which merchants. They would frequently call Wirex customer services for more information, putting a strain on Wirex's resources.

In search of a solution, Wirex turned to Google Cloud Partner Snowdrop Solutions, implementing its Merchant Reconciliation System™ API (MRS), which uses Google Maps Platform enriched transactions to offer customers location-based data for all their financial activities.

"The MRS API, with enriched transactions from Google Maps Platform, solved the challenge of providing our clients with clear transactional data," says Matveev. "By communicating detailed information about merchant location and type of transaction, we significantly reduced the number of customer-support inquiries, while further building transparency and trust with our customers."

A powerful tool to find and freeze fraudulent transactions

Thanks to Snowdrop's MRS API, based on Google Maps Platform location data, customers can now use the Wirex app to access their transaction history and see clear, detailed data about every transaction. This includes merchant names, categories, and logos, as well as the address and map location of where the transaction took place, giving users a comprehensive and instantly recognizable understanding of each transaction.

"MRS API and Google Maps Platform make it very easy for our customers to understand that a transaction is theirs, and therefore nothing to worry about," says Matveev. "At the same time, it's also a powerful tool for customers to easily spot fraudulent transactions, allowing them to immediately freeze the card or claim a chargeback. We have had a great deal of positive feedback about this."

Expanding internationally with global transaction data

As a result of implementing Snowdrop's MRS API, Wirex has reduced the number of transaction-related queries to its customer services team by 50%, helping it to focus resources on scaling the business.

With its ability to provide consistent transactional merchant data across continents, Google Maps Platform has enabled Wirex to scale geographically, too, expanding into new regions, while offering the same transactional data to customers wherever they are. It was that geographical reach that first motivated Snowdrop Solutions to implement Google Maps Platform into its Merchant Reconciliation System.

"There isn't a comparable platform in terms of the data that we can use to identify merchants globally. That just doesn’t exist," says Freddie Villis, Sales Director at Snowdrop Solutions. "Google Maps Platform helps us to help our clients scale their solutions more easily."

The fact that the MRS API also allows Wirex to show transaction data from both Visa and MasterCard on the same platform, rather than having to implement a solution for each payment method, has saved Wirex resources, too, giving the company more opportunity to scale its business. Since implementing MRS in 2019, Wirex has doubled its customer base from 3m to 6m and has expanded from its London base into Asia-Pacific and the US.

Basing product decisions on customer spending insights

Enriched transaction data from Google Maps Platform, including place and merchant details, also gives Wirex unprecedented insights into the spending habits of its customers, which it can use to make informed business decisions.

"By analyzing customer spending patterns in different countries and segments, we can make data-driven product decisions, which are extremely important for any digital business," explains Matveev. "Understanding, for example, that the two main spending categories for customers in Singapore are traveling and restaurants could allow us to provide more cashback for those categories, to boost spending volume. We can also use the data to build lookalike marketing campaigns to target prospective customers."

Preparing for the next cryptocurrency cycle

With the cryptocurrency market currently in what Matveev refers to as a crypto winter, Wirex's business priority is to aggressively grow its client base, with the goal of reaching 10 million customers within 18 months.

"By benefiting our customers with clear transaction data, and the ability to spot fraudulent transactions easily, Snowdrop's Transaction Enrichment API and Google Maps Platform has helped us to build trust in our brand," says Matveev. "This means more customer satisfaction, higher retention rates, and the ability to scale our user base to help us take cryptocurrency into the mainstream."