Breet Says Simpler Crypto Payments Must Also Earn Trust

Breet is focusing on making cryptocurrency payments easier to use while addressing the trust concerns that can arise when complex financial technology is presented as a simple service, according to the company’s chief operating officer, Vivian Mbene.

Speaking to Moonshot by TechCabal in Lagos on Wednesday, Mbene said improving the user experience for crypto payments was as difficult as building the infrastructure that supports them.

She described Breet’s main task as making a complicated product appear straightforward to customers. “We’re just obsessed with simplicity,” Mbene said, describing the company’s effort to reduce the work involved in completing a transaction.

Managing the complexity behind the transaction

Breet was founded in 2019 and converts cryptocurrency into cash for individuals in Nigeria and Ghana. The company also offers an application programming interface that allows businesses to accept crypto payments while receiving settlement in local currency.

Under this model, customers can pay with digital assets while businesses receive the local money they prefer to hold. This means merchants do not need to build and operate their own crypto infrastructure to support the payment option.

The operational processes involved include monitoring transactions, routing deposits and converting currencies. Breet’s proposition is to coordinate these functions in the background so merchants do not have to manage each stage themselves.

That separation allows the payment method used by a customer to differ from the currency ultimately received by a business. For merchants, the arrangement is intended to provide access to crypto payments without requiring them to take on the operational demands associated with managing digital assets.

Simplicity and confidence

Mbene said reducing visible complexity does not automatically remove concerns about how the service works. Customers and business partners may become suspicious when a process appears unusually easy, particularly when cryptocurrency is involved.

“Sometimes simplicity brings suspicion, and when it’s powered by crypto, the suspicion kind of doubles,” she said.

Her comments highlight the dual challenge facing crypto payment providers: they must make their services convenient while also demonstrating enough clarity and reliability for users and businesses to trust them.

For Breet, that involves keeping the technical and operational work behind the payment experience while presenting customers with a simpler way to transact. The company’s service is positioned around allowing individuals to convert crypto into cash and enabling businesses to accept digital assets with local-currency settlement.