Meet Artem Kirillov: General Manager At Performa

Operations and product leader with 15+ years of experience building and scaling digital products across fintech and crypto. C-level executive with expertise in crypto wallets, staking products, fiat-crypto infrastructure, payment operations, and high-volume digital platforms.

Artem has built and scaled digital products from early-stage concepts to revenue-generating businesses, including a non-custodial crypto wallet that reached 1M+ users, 200K+ MAU, and $4.5M in revenue.

Performa was created around an issue the team has repeatedly encountered: the more businesses start operating across cryptocurrency and fiat, the bigger appears the lack of effective infrastructure to host both of these systems.

Global digital-native companies often have their financial operations scattered across multiple platforms: they may accept payments in stablecoins, settle part of its revenue in fiat, pay contractors globally, split incoming funds between partners and manage treasury across wallets and bank accounts, all through separate systems.

Performa brings these processes into one operating layer. Its core range of services include Receiving Payments, for custodial and now non-custodial crypto acceptance, payment links, and invoices; Sending Payments, for bulk payouts to teams, contractors, vendors, and partners via CSV; Exchanging, for fiat on/off-ramp flows and structured access to vetted OTC partners and Managing Finances, which lets businesses monitor connected wallets in one dashboard, with simple KYB required to start.

Are Digital Products More Important Than Ever?

I would say yes.

It has been a while since digital products were simply online versions of existing services. For many companies, they are now the main environment in which customers interact with their products and go through the entire journey, from discovering and evaluating to onboarding and making a payment.

This means that the quality of each step of the journey shapes how people perceive the company itself. So in order to win a customer’s trust, the interface, speed and reliability of any product should appear impeccable. Especially, it concerns the payment stage as the final and most trust-driven one. A confusing checkout, failed transaction or missing confirmation can undo all the work that went into attracting and converting the customer.

At this point, a smooth payment experience is a basic expectation: nothing should stand between the customer’s willingness to pay and the successful completion of the transaction. Customers may prefer one of a plethora of methods and businesses need to support that choice without creating additional complexity in their own accounting and financial operations.

What Does Increased Adoption Of Both Cryptocurrencies And Stablecoins Mean For The World Of Digital Products?

It means that businesses can no longer treat crypto payments as a future possibility. They are already a significant part of the landscape, and their share is likely to keep growing. More people are using stablecoins and customers will increasingly expect them to be available, especially when it comes to global payments.

Crypto will not overpower fiat overnight but the sentiment towards it is obviously changing. Stablecoins are a practical alternative for the usual payment methods, and in my opinion, businesses need to be ready to adapt to this new option. Those that begin integrating crypto payments now will be better positioned than those forced to catch up once they become a standard customer expectation.

What Are The Biggest Challenges Companies Face When They Handle Both Crypto And Fiat Currencies?

The biggest challenge is that once businesses integrate crypto payments into their existing flows, they quickly discover just how fragmented their financial data ends up being. Most platforms serving this market are either fiat-native operators adding crypto as an extra feature, or crypto-only infrastructure built and priced for enterprise-scale companies.

Neither model fully reflects what most SMBs actually need and that is why often businesses are forced to use multiple services to meet their operational needs.

In reality, a company integrating a crypto layer needs to be able to choose between fiat and stablecoins depending on the specific invoice, payout or settlement it is handling. That becomes difficult when funds and transaction data are spread across platforms with different withdrawal rules, spreads and fees.

The problem becomes more serious as transaction volumes grow. A large share of the work like moving funds, reconciling transactions and preparing payouts, is still handled manually, which consumes time and increases the risk of error. What may be manageable with a small number of transactions quickly becomes a bottleneck when the business scales.

What Problems Does Performa Go About Solving In Space?

Performa is designed to remove the operational gaps between receiving money, converting it, allocating it and paying it out. Instead of using separate providers for all sorts of functions, businesses can manage these processes within one financial workspace. This gives a clearer view of where funds are, how they are being used and what needs to happen next.

The platform supports crypto invoices and payment links, payment orchestration and revenue splitting, mass payouts through CSV or API, and access to vetted OTC partners. The broader goal is to help SMBs use fiat and stablecoins according to the needs of each transaction without forcing them to build their own infrastructure or coordinate several disconnected platforms manually.

What Has Been Your Biggest Achievement To Date?

Payments is one of the most competitive areas in fintech, and the bar keeps rising as regulation becomes more demanding. Building a high-quality product that would still be accessible to SMBs, while creating a sustainable business around it, is a major challenge in itself.

I believe we have managed to solve it by building a strong product discovery process that keeps us focused on developing only the functionality customers genuinely need and are willing to pay for. This approach is already paying off: we are receiving great feedback from large clients, which is a strong signal for a young product that we are solving a real problem and moving in the right direction.

Do You Think Crypto Will Overtake Fiat As The Preferred Digital Payment Method?

I do not think crypto needs to replace fiat to become central to the future of payments. The broader trend towards global, always-on commerce is not going away, and crypto expands the range of tools available to businesses and consumers, particularly where traditional payment rails are slow, expensive or limited by borders.

The companies most likely to win the market, will be those that abstract the user experience away from the underlying rails. Customers should simply be able to choose the fastest, most convenient option and have the transaction work seamlessly. The future is therefore not crypto versus fiat, but infrastructure that allows both to operate as part of the same experience.

Why Are Digital Asset Classes Growing?

Digital asset classes are growing because crypto has reset expectations around how money should move. It allowed people to transfer funds globally, at any time and often within minutes. Once such a seamless experience became possible, the same expectations naturally extended to how people want to spend, save and access other financial products.

Another important shift contributing to digital assets’ growth is that they are expanding beyond crypto-native instruments. Stablecoins provide access to digital dollars, while tokenisation can make assets such as equities, funds or private-market investments easier to work with. In my view, today’s growth is being driven less by speculation than by the gradual redesign of how financial assets are accessed.

What Is Next For You?

We have reached the point where the core idea behind Performa has been validated, so the focus now is on turning a strong early product into a more complete financial operating platform. That means improving the functionality already in use, making onboarding increasingly self-service and ensuring the product remains straightforward as customers’ transaction volumes and operational needs grow

We are also broadening the infrastructure around it. The next phase includes support for more local currencies, virtual IBANs and open banking integrations. Taken together, these additions will move Performa closer to its long-term goal: giving businesses one place to manage crypto and fiat without treating them as two separate financial systems.