Business

Hiring During a Pandemic

Published

5 years ago

March 24, 2021

How is it possible for you to recruit and then hire a few new employees when your business shifted to completely remote work during the pandemic? Here’s a quick look at a few ways to successfully transition your strategy for employee recruitment and hiring.

The Basics

You can’t forget the basics – writing a job description, recruiting, interviewing, and even criminal background checks before hiring someone. We’ll dive a bit deeper into a couple of these, along with how they might change. Others, such as the background checks, should stay the same.

Get the Word Out

It doesn’t matter whether you’ll be looking for an executive assistant or a data entry specialist; if people don’t know you’re hiring, you won’t be hiring anyone. The thing is many people who might’ve been looking for a job before the pandemic hit might simply assume that nobody is hiring, so you need to let them know that you are. Be sure that any open position is listed on your website, but don’t forget to call attention to them on social media and other online venues.

It’s All in the Details

If you do happen to be hiring during a pandemic, you’ll definitely need a well-thought-out and detailed plan of attack for recruiting before you dig in. Remote hiring is an incredibly different experience from hiring face to face, and you have a responsibility to potential employees and to your business to ensure that you’ve got a process that will work. To that end, be sure that you have tested your tech before beginning to hire and ask the people you’re interviewing to check their tech as well. Remember that anything you can do before the interview to ensure that all goes well is a great way to start.

When you send an invitation to interview, be sure you list how the process works and what to expect. Be sure to include all of the vital information, like date, time, and who will initiate the video chat. Provide prospective employees with a link to the actual video meeting, and let them know whether the position will be temporarily or permanently remote.

Keep It Real

Once you’ve written and posted the job description and have enticed people to interview, you need to keep in mind that times are quite uncertain for both employees and businesses. When you hire someone, you need to ensure that your business will support onboarding employees with no modifications or reservations. Be completely conscious of what you’re offering. Ensure the position will be at least long-term if not completely permanent and comes complete with benefits and competitive pay. If you have an inkling that once the pandemic has passed, there might be a shift to working on-site, let them know that up front. Always keep things real, and be on the same page with the people you’re interviewing and hiring.

If your business is hiring, just keep in mind that due to the pandemic and all of the changes everyone has had to make, things might be a bit different from what we’re used to – for both your business and the people out there looking for employment. With things like face-to-face interviews and preceding and subsequent conversations needing to occur via video chat, it may seem even less personal than normal. Just make sure that you adapt any and all necessary recruiting practices to ensure that you keep the employee candidate pipeline as full as possible, and things will continue to go smoothly.

Business

Inside the $4.3B Quarter: What’s Fueling Black Banx’s Record Revenues

Published

2 days ago

January 16, 2026

Matthew Wiles

Every quarter brings fresh headlines in fintech, but few make the kind of impact achieved by Black Banx in Q2 2025. The Toronto-based global digital banking group, founded by Michael Gastauer, reported an extraordinary USD 4.3 billion in revenue and a record USD 1.6 billion in pre-tax profit, while improving its cost-to-income ratio to 63%.

These results not only highlight the company’s operational efficiency but also mark a pivotal moment in its journey from challenger to global leader. The big question is: what’s fueling such impressive financial performance?

Customer Growth as the Core Driver

One of the clearest engines of revenue growth is Black Banx’s expanding customer base. By Q2 2025, the platform had reached 84 million clients worldwide, up from 69 million at the end of 2024. This 15 million net gain in six months demonstrates both the attractiveness of its services and the scalability of its model.

Unlike traditional banks, which rely heavily on branch expansion, Black Banx leverages digital-first onboarding that allows customers to open accounts within minutes using just a smartphone. This approach is especially effective in regions underserved by legacy institutions, where access to affordable financial tools is in high demand.

More customers don’t just mean higher transaction volumes—they generate a compounding effect where network size, brand trust, and service adoption reinforce one another.

Real-Time Payments and Cross-Border Solutions

A major contributor to Q2 revenues is the platform’s real-time payments infrastructure. Black Banx enables instant cross-border transfers across its 28 supported fiat currencies and multiple cryptocurrencies, helping both individuals and businesses bypass the traditional bottlenecks of international banking.

For freelancers, SMEs, and multinational clients, this means faster liquidity, reduced foreign exchange costs, and simplified global operations. The demand for real-time financial services is growing rapidly—Juniper Research projects global real-time payments turnover to hit USD 58 trillion by 2028—and Black Banx is strategically positioned to capture a significant share of this market.

Crypto Integration as a Revenue Stream

Another key revenue driver is crypto integration. While many traditional institutions remain hesitant, Black Banx embraced digital assets early and has built infrastructure to support Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the Lightning Network. In Q2 2025, 20% of all transactions on the platform were crypto-based, reflecting strong customer appetite for hybrid banking services that bridge fiat and digital assets.

Revenue comes not only from transaction fees but also from value-added services like crypto-to-fiat conversion, staking yields (4–12% APY), and blockchain-enabled payments. For customers in markets with unstable currencies, these services act as a financial lifeline, further expanding the platform’s relevance.

AI-Powered Efficiency and Risk Management

Record revenues would be less impressive if costs ballooned at the same rate. But Black Banx has proven adept at balancing growth with efficiency. Its cost-to-income ratio improved to 63% in Q2, down from 69% a year earlier, thanks to heavy reliance on AI-powered automation.

AI now drives fraud detection, compliance, and customer onboarding—areas where traditional banks often struggle with cost inefficiencies. By automating these processes, Black Banx can process millions of transactions securely while maintaining profitability at scale. This level of efficiency is rare in fintech, where high growth often comes at the expense of margins.

Regional Expansion and Untapped Markets

Geography also plays a role in fueling revenues. Much of the Q2 growth came from Africa, South Asia, and Latin America—regions where demand for mobile-first banking continues to soar. In 2024 alone, Black Banx reported a 32% increase in SME clients from the Middle East and Africa, signaling the strength of its positioning in underserved markets.

By extending services to populations previously excluded from formal banking—migrant workers, rural communities, and small businesses—Black Banx taps into vast pools of latent demand. The strategy proves that financial inclusion and profitability are not mutually exclusive but mutually reinforcing.

Diversified Revenue Streams

Another factor behind Q2’s record revenues is Black Banx’s diversified business model. Income is not tied to a single service but spread across multiple streams, including:

Transaction fees from cross-border transfers and payments.
Crypto trading and exchange services.
Premium account features for high-net-worth clients.
Corporate services for SMEs and international businesses.

This diversification insulates the company against volatility in any single segment, creating stable revenue growth even in shifting market conditions.

Michael Gastauer’s Strategic Blueprint

Behind these results is Michael Gastauer’s long-term strategy: scale aggressively but with efficiency, innovation, and inclusion at the core. His vision has always been to create a borderless financial ecosystem, and Q2 2025’s performance is evidence that this vision is not only achievable but sustainable.

By balancing mass-market accessibility with premium features, and by blending fiat with digital assets, Gastauer has positioned Black Banx as a category-defining player in global finance.

The Road Ahead: Toward 100 Million Clients

Looking forward, the company’s goal of reaching 100 million customers by the end of 2025 will likely be the next catalyst for revenue growth. More customers mean more transactions, more data insights, and more opportunities to refine and expand its service offering.

If current momentum holds, the USD 4.3 billion quarterly revenue milestone could be just the beginning of an even larger growth story. The challenge will be ensuring systems scale securely while maintaining trust in an environment where privacy and compliance are paramount.

A Record That Signals More to Come

Black Banx’s Q2 2025 performance—USD 4.3 billion in revenue, USD 1.6 billion in pre-tax profit, 84 million clients worldwide, and a lean 63% cost-to-income ratio—is more than a financial milestone. It is a signal of how the future of banking is being rewritten by platforms that are borderless, crypto-inclusive, and data-driven.

What fueled this record-breaking quarter is not one innovation but a combination of strategies—scalable onboarding, real-time payments, crypto integration, AI efficiency, and expansion into underserved regions. Together, they form a model that doesn’t just challenge traditional banking but actively builds the foundation for global dominance.

For Black Banx, the road ahead is clear: the $4.3 billion quarter is not an endpoint but a launchpad for even greater scale and profitability.