Wyre Lifts Withdrawal Limits After Fresh Funding From Strategic Partner

Wyre, a San Francisco-based crypto payments firm, has lifted its depositing freeze and 90% withdrawal limit after receiving financing from a strategic partner, the company announced yesterday on Twitter.

The reversal came a little less than a week after Wyre had implemented withdrawal limits for user accounts, citing “the best interest of our community.” 

The company announced on January 7 that while customer withdrawals would be limited to no more than 90% of the funds in each account, subject to current daily limits. 

The company also announced that its CEO Ioannis Giannaros would step into a different role while Stephen Cheng, whose previous positions at the firm include chief risk officer and chief compliance officer, would take over as interim CEO.

In its Twitter post yesterday, the firm added, "​​This additional capital will help us continue to deliver on our mission to simplify and revolutionize the global financial ecosystem."

It’s unclear who the strategic partner is, and Wyre has not immediately responded to Decrypt’s request for comment.

Wyre's bumpy road

Founded in 2013, Wyre's recent history has been marred by negative headlines as the crypto bear market took shape.

In September 2022, the firm saw its $1.5 billion deal to be acquired by online payments startup Bolt fall through, though the two companies salvaged a commercial agreement to implement some of Wyre's solutions into Bolt's customer platform.

Wyre 'Scaling Back' Operations Amid Crypto Winter: CEO

Ioannis Giannaros, the CEO of Crypto payments company Wyre, has allegedly told his employees via email that he is liquidating the company and plans to terminate services this month, according to a report by Axios.  Citing two unnamed employees as sources, alongside a recent layoff posted on LinkedIn, the report notes that Giannaros downplayed allegations of a shutdown in a follow-up email, saying: "We’re still operating but will be scaling back to plan our next steps."  Giannaros declined to com...

Reports at the beginning of January this year alleged that its CEO had sent an email to his employees announcing that the company would be liquidated and services terminated this month. Though Giannaros downplayed the allegations, he wrote in a follow-up email that Wyre is "still operating but will be scaling back to plan our next steps."

Then, on January 6, crypto wallet MetaMask announced that Wyre would be removed from its mobile aggregator.

Despite this wave of rather bearish news, Wyre's unnamed strategic partner appears to be keeping the firm afloat for now.