Exclusive Interview: Maksym Sakharov on Building WeFi and Leading Innovation

In this exclusive interview with TechBullion, Maksym shares the story behind WeFi’s journey, the strategic thinking that has shaped the company’s growth, and the significance of its collaboration with Visa. He also offers valuable insights into the future of decentralised finance, the importance of governance and trust in financial innovation, and how WeFi is building the infrastructure to support the next generation of global digital payments.

1) Please introduce yourself to our readers, could you share the journey that led you to become Group CEO of WeFi, and explain what WeFi does, the problem it solves, and the vision driving the company today?

I am Maksym Sakharov, Group CEO and co-founder of WeFi. My background is in software, fintech, business development, and digital asset infrastructure. Earlier in my career, I worked across operational and growth roles before founding Aeon Labs, an IT company focused on fintech and blockchain solutions. I later co-founded Whitemark, a blockchain-based real estate platform, and EXFLOW, a European OTC crypto exchange.

Each stage showed me a different part of the same problem. Financial technology was becoming more digital, but users still had to move between disconnected products, separate balances, technical crypto workflows, and limited payment access.

WeFi was built to address that gap. It is a Deobanking infrastructure provider designed to support onchain settlement, digital asset functionality, payment access, and account-style usability. The vision is to make digital value easier to use in everyday financial activity, while keeping the technical systems underneath as simple as possible for the user.

2) WeFi’s collaboration with Visa marks a major milestone. What does this achievement mean to you personally, and what does it say about the company’s growth and credibility within the global payments industry?

Personally, the collaboration with Visa is meaningful because it reflects a change in how the market views onchain infrastructure. For a long time, digital assets were discussed mainly as a separate category. This collaboration shows that the conversation is moving toward practical payment use cases and real financial access.

For WeFi, it marks a new stage of credibility. A global payments organization does not evaluate a company only on its vision. It looks at execution, discipline, operating logic, product direction, and the ability to work within a serious payments environment. That is why this milestone matters to the company.

It also creates responsibility. Collaboration with a global payments leader raises the standard for how WeFi continues to build, communicate, and execute. I see it as validation of the direction we chose, but the real measure will be how that direction translates into useful financial experiences for users over time.

3) Looking back on your career, which experiences have had the greatest influence on your leadership style and the way you have built WeFi into the business it is today?

The experiences that influenced me most were the ones where the idea was strong, but execution determined the outcome. In fintech and blockchain, it is easy to underestimate how much depends on operations, partners, timing, regulation, liquidity, and user trust. A product can be technically advanced and still fail if those elements are not aligned.

That shaped my leadership style. I try to look at businesses as systems, not as isolated products. When building financial infrastructure, each decision affects something else: how the user enters the product, how value moves, how partners operate, how risk is controlled, and how trust is built.

It also taught me to respect discipline. Vision is important, but it has to be translated into decisions, priorities, and execution. At WeFi, that means staying focused on what can become genuinely useful rather than what sounds interesting in the moment.

4) Many fintech companies are competing to bridge traditional finance and blockchain. What do you believe has enabled WeFi to stand apart in such a competitive market?

WeFi stands apart because it starts from the financial action rather than the technology label. Many products in this space still assume that users are comfortable managing networks, wallets, conversions, and separate systems. That limits adoption because most people and businesses simply want a clearer way to access, move, and use value.

The WeFi approach is to reduce the operational burden on the user. If someone wants to make a payment, move funds across markets, access digital assets, or manage balances, the product should make that action more understandable rather than expose more technical layers.

The other difference is that WeFi is infrastructure-led. The company is not built around one market cycle or one feature. It is built around the larger problem of making onchain capability usable inside practical financial workflows. In a competitive market, that focus matters because long-term value comes from solving structural problems.

5) What have been the most important strategic decisions you’ve made as CEO that helped position WeFi for sustainable growth and long-term success?

The first major decision was to build WeFi as infrastructure rather than as a single-feature product. That was a harder path, but it gave the company a stronger foundation. A narrow product can capture attention quickly, but infrastructure can support a wider set of financial actions over time.

The second decision was to bring governance and regulatory thinking into product development early. In financial services, trust is shaped by how the system is designed: partner selection, controls, responsibilities, disclosures, and user protection. Those considerations cannot be left until later.

The third decision was to prioritize usability. Onchain technology can be powerful, but it should not make the user’s experience more complicated. Those three choices, infrastructure first, governance early, and usability as a constant discipline, have helped WeFi grow with a clearer long-term direction.

6) How will the Visa collaboration improve the experience of WeFi users, and what practical benefits can customers expect from this partnership?

The Visa collaboration supports WeFi’s work to bring digital asset access closer to payment behavior people already understand. For users, the practical benefit is the direction it creates: less separation between holding value and using value.

This type of collaboration does not mean every product outcome appears immediately. Payments require careful development across product design, market requirements, compliance, operations, and partner integration. The important point is that WeFi is building with a global payments context in mind, which helps shape the product toward more practical use.

Over time, customers should benefit from experiences that feel more connected. The goal is to make payment-related functionality more intuitive, reduce the need for users to think about the technical infrastructure, and support a clearer path between digital assets and everyday financial activity. The value of the collaboration is in bringing that direction closer to real payment environments.

7) As digital finance continues to evolve, how do you balance rapid innovation with the governance, compliance and trust expected by global financial institutions?

The balance comes from knowing where speed helps and where it creates risk. Product teams should move quickly when improving usability, testing flows, and solving technical problems. But areas such as custody-related responsibilities, payments, partner roles, compliance controls, and user protection need more careful review.

At WeFi, governance is part of how the product is built. That means asking practical questions early: who is responsible for each function, how risk is controlled, how users understand the service, and how partners fit into the operating model.

This does not stop innovation. It gives innovation a structure that can survive real financial requirements. Global financial institutions expect that discipline because trust is created through accountability, documentation, operational consistency, and security. The strongest digital finance companies will be those that can keep building without treating governance as a delay or a formality.

8) Building trust is essential in financial services. How has WeFi approached security, transparency and regulatory responsibility while continuing to innovate?

WeFi approaches trust as an operating principle. In financial services, users and partners need to know how value is accessed, how responsibilities are divided, and how risk is managed. That means security, transparency, and regulatory responsibility have to be considered before a product reaches the market.

Security starts with architecture. A company has to think carefully about permissions, transaction flows, access points, custody-related responsibilities, and the moments where users interact with the system. Transparency means making the product understandable, including what users can do, what partners provide, and where different responsibilities sit.

Regulatory responsibility follows the same logic. Digital finance cannot scale seriously if compliance is treated as an afterthought. WeFi continues to innovate, but within a framework that can support user confidence and partner trust. In this market, the strongest products will be the ones users can understand, partners can work with, and institutions can evaluate seriously.

9) Every growing business faces defining challenges. Which obstacle tested you most as a leader, and what lasting lessons did it teach you?

The most difficult obstacle has been building in a market where the category itself is still being defined. WeFi operates across digital assets, payments, stablecoins, onchain settlement, and financial infrastructure. Each area evolves at a different speed, and each market has different expectations around regulation, access, user behavior, and trust.

That environment tests leadership because there is rarely perfect certainty. Waiting too long can slow the company down, but moving without enough structure can create risk. The lesson has been that speed only helps when the company has a clear framework for making decisions.

For me, the lasting lesson is focus. In a noisy market, a company needs to know what problem it is solving and what it will not chase. WeFi has stayed focused on making digital value more usable through infrastructure that can support practical financial activity. That clarity helps the team move through uncertainty without losing direction.

10) As WeFi has expanded internationally, how has your role as CEO evolved, and what leadership qualities have become increasingly important?

As WeFi has expanded, my role has become more focused on prioritization and market judgment. In the early stages, a founder can be close to almost every product and operational decision. As the company grows internationally, the harder task is deciding where to focus, which opportunities are worth pursuing, and which ones should wait.

International growth requires discipline because every market has its own payment behavior, regulatory expectations, partner landscape, and user needs. Entering a market too early can create complexity without enough value. Entering too late can mean missing important momentum.

The leadership qualities that matter more over time are clarity, consistency, and restraint. Clarity helps teams understand the company’s direction. Consistency keeps the strategy stable across markets. Restraint matters because growth should be selective. Infrastructure companies need to scale with discipline, not only ambition.

11) Beyond commercial success, what company culture have you worked to build at WeFi, and why is that culture essential to achieving your long-term vision?

The culture I have worked to build is one of serious builders. In digital assets, attention moves quickly, and teams can become distracted by narratives that do not translate into durable products. WeFi needs people who are curious about technology but disciplined about its purpose.

That means asking direct questions every day. Does this solve a real problem? Does it make the product clearer? Does it create operational risk? Does it help users or partners do something meaningful with value? A strong culture makes those questions normal inside the company.

This is essential because financial infrastructure is shaped by thousands of small decisions. Security, product clarity, partner trust, and operational quality are not only the result of formal policies. They come from how people think and build. I want WeFi to have ambition, but also restraint, responsibility, and precision. That is the culture needed to build something lasting in this market.

12) How does WeFi ensure its products solve genuine customer challenges rather than simply responding to the latest trends within the blockchain industry?

WeFi starts with the customer problem before deciding how the technology should be used. The team looks at the financial action first: what is the user trying to complete, where does the process become difficult, and what part of the experience creates unnecessary work?

This approach helps avoid trend-led product design. A blockchain feature may sound advanced, but if it makes the user manage more steps, understand more systems, or take on more confusion, it has not improved the experience. The technology should simplify the financial action, not make the user feel closer to the infrastructure.

For WeFi, that means focusing on practical issues such as access, payment utility, value movement, and product clarity. The measure of success is not whether a feature sounds innovative. It is whether it helps people and businesses complete financial actions more reliably. That discipline keeps the product connected to real demand instead of market noise.

13) What is the biggest misconception about blockchain-powered financial services that you would like to challenge, and how is WeFi helping to change that perception?

The biggest misconception is that blockchain-powered financial services are mainly about replacing existing systems or creating a separate financial world. I do not think that is the most useful way to look at the technology. The more important opportunity is to improve how value moves, settles, and becomes accessible inside the financial environments people already use.

That distinction is important because many users are not looking for a new technical category. They are looking for better access, clearer payments, faster movement of value, and products they can understand. If blockchain-based services feel disconnected from those needs, adoption will stay limited to people who are already comfortable with the complexity.

WeFi is helping change that perception by treating onchain infrastructure as a practical layer for financial activity, not as the product story itself. The goal is to make the technology useful without making it the user’s burden. When blockchain improves the financial action instead of demanding attention, it becomes much easier for people and businesses to take it seriously.

14) Following this milestone with Visa, what are the next strategic priorities for WeFi, and where do you see the company’s greatest opportunities for growth?

Following the Visa milestone, WeFi’s priorities are to deepen its infrastructure, strengthen payment utility, and expand selectively into markets where the company can solve a real access or value movement problem. The goal is not to grow everywhere. It is to grow where WeFi can be useful and where the operating environment supports responsible scale.

Stablecoin settlement and onchain payments remain important areas of development because businesses and individuals increasingly need faster and clearer ways to move value across markets. The challenge is making those capabilities practical inside payment and account-style environments, not only technically possible.

Partnerships will also matter. Financial infrastructure does not scale in isolation. It requires strong relationships across payment networks, service providers, market partners, and regulated access points. The greatest opportunity for WeFi is to become part of the infrastructure layer that helps make digital value usable in real payment and financial contexts.

15) Looking ahead, what legacy do you hope to leave through your leadership at WeFi, and what lasting impact do you want the company to have on the future of global finance?

The legacy I would like to leave is a company that made onchain finance easier to use without making users more technical. The strongest financial technology often becomes almost invisible. People do not think about the infrastructure every time they make a payment or move money. They think about the action they need to complete.

That is the impact I want WeFi to have. If digital assets, stablecoins, and onchain settlement are going to become part of global finance, they need to feel practical, reliable, and understandable. They also need to develop with the responsibility that financial services require.

I do not see the best outcome as a world where users must choose between familiar financial access and digital infrastructure. The stronger outcome is a system where those layers work together more effectively. If WeFi helps make that possible, then the company will have created value beyond its own growth.