About
The Bitwala Story
The Bitwala Story
Our Vision
We want to empower people to exchange value like they exchange ideas. Globally, instantly and at the lowest possible cost.
Values
Built for trust
Trust takes a long time to build and only seconds to break. We have honesty and integrity in everything we do. We don’t trade trust for anything.
Simplicity
We don’t think in problems. We think in solutions.
Not your typical bank
We apply technology and creativity in building innovative, different and authentic products that you enjoy using.
Sustainability
We are building a exceptional product with a long-term vision in mind to provide financial freedom to our customers, now and in the future.
Journey
It has always been our goal to make living on cryptocurrencies as easy as possible. This also meant including the fiat side so it has become our mission to disrupt banking by building an account to seamlessly transition between the cryptocurrency and fiat worlds.
2014
The founders start the brand Bitwala under the legal entity Safaru B.V. in the Netherlands. The product enables customers to transfer Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to more than a 100 countries for payments or to top-up their Bitwala Prepaid Card.
2015 - 2017
Bitwala GmbH secured €800,000 in seed funding from HTGF (High-Tech Gruenderfonds) and DCG (Digital Currency Group) in 2016 and secured further €1.5 million funding from ALSTIN (Alternative Strategic Investment GmbH) and HTGF in 2017. By December 2017, more than 75,000 users are using the product Bitwala and have processed more than €65 million in cryptocurrency to fiat transfers.
2018
After the removal of the license of the card issuing partner, Bitwala has to suspend their services. In January 2018 Bitwala GmbH takes over the brand Bitwala to build the new product. In order to do that Bitwala GmbH carries out a further funding round of €4 mil. of the renowned investors Earlybird and Coparion. Bitwala GmbH launches their new Blockchain Banking product in cooperation with the German partner bank solarisBank to merge the crypto and the fiat world.
Backed by
Established investors
Established investors
Jörg von Minckwitz
President and Co-founder
Jörg von Minckwitz
President and Co-founder
Jörg previously founded Europe’s first crypto consulting, crypto incubator and first cryptocurrency e-commerce shop. His work has been awarded by the Paris Fintech Forum, ICT Spring, Pioneers Festival and The German Innovations Prize.
Ben Jones
Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder
Ben Jones
Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder
Ben is a self-taught programer with over 5 years of experience in blockchain and cryptocurrencies. A London School of Economics graduate, Ben previously taught programming in Ghana, founded a web agency for early-stage startups, and was an economist in the UK civil service.
Jan Goslicki
Chief Compliance Officer and Co-founder
Jan Goslicki
Chief Compliance Officer and Co-founder
Jan studied economics and has over 5 years of crypto and blockchain experience under his belt. Before founding Bitwala with Jörg and Ben, he worked at PwC. Jan handles compliance, customer success and finances together with our CFO.
Konstantin Werhahn
Chief Product Officer
Konstantin Werhahn
Chief Product Officer
Konstantin has over 9 years of extensive experience in Banking, FinTech and Startups. Prior to Bitwala, he oversaw the product development at FinTech Group AG and helped to restructure the 450 employee large group into a white-label platform banking provider. He was also the Head of Product at the FinTech startup Barzahlen.de.
Christoph Iwaniez
Chief Financial Officer
Christoph Iwaniez
Chief Financial Officer
Christoph was previously the CFO of GIZS which connects the German Sparkassen Group to the paydirekt payment scheme and before that 10 years at Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW), one of Germanys biggest banking groups.
Re-envisioning banking
Want to join our team?