— After the launch, when did you start seeing the first real results?

— The app was effectively in a closed beta until 2023. Then, in 2023, we connected bank payments and made it possible for users to instantly withdraw money to the largest banks in Kuwait. As soon as we did that and decided not to charge a fee for those withdrawals, we saw a huge increase in app usage.

We also had several very successful marketing campaigns. For example, a group of Filipino cyclists was hit in Kuwait, and people were collecting donations for them. We decided to organise the fundraising through Kem. That single activation brought us thousands of users.

— How much did you raise for the campaign?

Around five thousand dollars.

— And then came the investment story with Tether?

— We met Tether in 2024, and from that point we decided to change the direction of the company.

They learned about us partly through a Forbes article and through media coverage in general. At the time, I was looking for investment all over the world, and in the end we met literally in a coffee shop across the street from my home in Tbilisi. Their investment team was based in Georgia.

Our story made a lot of sense to them. They wanted to expand into the Middle East, and at that point they didn’t have any investments in the Gulf or in the Middle East more broadly. We effectively became a distribution channel for them, with a convenient and understandable user experience.

Initially, they simply asked us to add USDT as another payment option alongside the others.

Then we realised that if we wanted to expand beyond Kuwait in the future, crypto infrastructure was a better fit for that. There are fewer regulatory barriers, and you don’t need to obtain a separate banking licence in every country.

Eventually, we came to the conclusion that the most logical thing to do was to fully relaunch the app as a kind of crypto bank.

— How would you define Kem’s goal today?

— Our long-term goal is to provide financial solutions across the Middle East.

At the moment, around 70% of the population in the Middle East either has no access to banking services at all or has only limited access. By that I mean bank accounts, cards, regular payments, and so on. That is our bigger long-term goal.

— And if we look at it specifically from the user’s point of view, what problem are you solving for them? Is it mainly about making payments easier?

— For example, I’m a Georgian citizen, I have a Georgian passport, and I have never really had major problems opening bank accounts in other countries.

But in the Gulf, this is an issue because banks and traditional financial institutions don’t particularly see value in foreigners. They tend to see them more as a risk.

And that applies both to migrant workers doing lower-paid or manual jobs and to white-collar workers in offices. A lot of people simply can’t get bank accounts opened for them.

That is exactly the problem we are trying to solve.

— Kem is supposed to work for users at any level of financial literacy. Not everyone understands finance or crypto particularly well. How did you work on that?

— We realised that one of the biggest problems with crypto wallets, and really with most crypto companies, is that they focus on a very small community of people who already understand how crypto works.

They build a product for that small segment of people and somehow assume that it will automatically work for everyone else too.

As a result, someone who has never dealt with crypto and has never been part of that environment often simply can’t use these products.

We invested a lot of resources into design. We went through six designers. My co-founders are very meticulous people, and they wanted the app to look perfect.

But at every stage, we were also collecting feedback from users. We had a beta group of around 100 people — friends, family, people we knew. They constantly suggested feature changes or simply told us, “This part isn’t clear.” And we changed things very quickly.

— You often talk about financial freedom. How do you make that possible for your users? What solutions do you offer?

— We have our own cards. They work with Apple Pay and can be used all over the world. We also support Google Pay. I can use the card in different countries; it works here and across the Gulf. That is one of the key parts of our app.

We have a feature that lets you split any payment. You can go into your transaction history, select any card transaction, and split it between any contacts in your phone.

You can also generate a link and send it to someone who doesn’t even have the app. They simply receive the link, open it, and make the transfer. They don’t even need to be a Kem user.

We also give users cashback in Tether Gold for transactions. The tokens are backed by a corresponding reserve of physical gold. Tether holds a large amount of physical gold in Switzerland and continues to add to those reserves.

The asset is currently worth almost two billion dollars, and we are the largest distributor of Tether Gold to retail users. Cashback is one of the ways we do that.

Another interesting feature is deposits. We pay 4.5% annual interest on dollar accounts, which is much higher than many banks in the US and certainly higher than most banks in the region. They usually pay less.

There are also withdrawals to different markets — South Asia, the Gulf itself, and so on.

We have also added stocks. Now, through the app, you can buy shares in almost any company traded in the US, starting from five dollars.

That's a low barrier to entry, because many brokerage accounts in Dubai, for example, require deposits of several thousand dollars. With a smaller amount, you often simply won’t be able to trade stocks.

— And do you have physical cards?

— We launched them very recently.

When it comes to physical cards, our users will be able to order them very soon. Delivery usually takes between five and seven days. It depends on the region, but effectively all deliveries within the Gulf take five to seven days. For other countries, it takes slightly longer.

The digital card is issued automatically as soon as the person completes KYC and uploads a document. That can be a driving licence, residence permit, passport, and so on.

— Did you ever consider abandoning cards, or are they still important?

— At the beginning, when the crypto community was first developing, there really was this ambition to move completely away from existing payment systems and onto new rails.

But it turned out that, unfortunately, that simply doesn’t work — at least not yet.

Card payment networks still effectively have a monopoly on payments. I think it will take several decades to move businesses, especially small and medium-sized ones, away from cards and towards some alternative system.

So today, the main value of crypto is the ability to transfer money between different people or businesses.

But when it comes to paying for actual goods and services, those payments are still mostly made by card. And I don’t think that is going to change anytime soon.

— And what about partner programmes?

— Yes, we already offer additional cashback on delivery services. This includes Talabat, Keeta - which is also a major delivery service in Saudi Arabia and Dubai – and Uber. We offer up to 5% cashback on these deliveries.

We also offer up to 3% cashback on airline tickets and taxi rides. We work with services including Uber, Careem and Yango.

— How do you want to develop the app? What are the next steps?

— We have a very important milestone this year: obtaining two licences in Bahrain.

We are getting a crypto licence to operate a crypto bank in the region, and we are also launching the first stablecoin in the country.

Next year, we are already planning to enter the Dubai market fully with similar licences. We already serve that market, but once we obtain the licence, we will be able to launch our own stablecoin - essentially our own currency.

That will make the process of transferring money from any Dubai bank even easier.