Interview: Concordium CEO Boris Bohrer-Bilowitzki on building a privacy-preserving blockchain for real-world payments

Concordium is positioning itself as a layer-one blockchain focused on embedding identity and compliance at the protocol level to support programmable, regulated digital payments.

As stablecoins move toward broader real-world use and age-verification requirements expand across multiple sectors, the company argues that a privacy-preserving but compliance-ready infrastructure is becoming essential.

In this interview with Invezz, CEO Boris Bohrer-Bilowitzki discusses Concordium’s core architecture, its recent partnerships with Bitcoin.com and Ledger, the role of zero-knowledge verification, the evolving regulatory landscape, and how the company anticipates adoption will develop in the coming years.

Here are the excerpts from the interview:

Invezz: To begin, could you give us a basic introduction to Concordium, its vision, and how you plan to take it forward?

Concordium is a layer-one blockchain built around two core ideas: identity embedded at the base layer, and addressing risks around smart contracts used for issuing tokens and custodial functions.

We developed protocol-level tokens, or PLTs, that allow native issuance on the chain to enable true programmable money.

Much of this is aimed at stablecoins, because beyond Tether and to some extent USDC, most stablecoins still lack real use cases.

Concordium positions itself as the chain for payment finance, or “pay-fi.”

If you read the first line in the Satoshi white paper, it basically says global electronic peer-to-peer cash.

Bitcoin couldn’t scale to that, but stablecoins can, and our chain is designed to support this vision. We literally build new infrastructure specifically for that.

Invezz: I also wanted to ask about your partnership with Bitcoin.com and Ledger. How did that come about, and when do you expect the integration to happen?

There are several angles to this. We live in a digital world, and everyone talks about real-world adoption, but it hasn’t truly happened.

After a decade in this industry, I realised you shouldn’t solve hypothetical problems—you should solve existing ones.

Age-restricted verticals like gambling, gaming, adult content, and social media all face increasing regulatory pressure around age verification.

Regulators want to prevent minors from accessing restricted content, and they’re right to enforce that.

But users shouldn’t have to repeatedly submit passports, driver’s licenses, or selfies for every service. Ideally, you verify once and then operate in a privacy-preserving ecosystem.

Concordium balances privacy and compliance. If you don’t solve privacy, you won’t get users; if you ignore compliance, regulators won’t engage. The regulator is not going to go away.

Our identity layer allows users to verify once and interact privately, without platforms storing personal data.

Ledger is a good example. It holds about a quarter of global crypto, but the user experience is mostly limited to self-custody.

They want their users to interact with a wider ecosystem, and after years of searching, they concluded that Concordium is the only chain that can enable this. Bitcoin.com, with roughly 75 million users, faces similar regulatory pressure.

Their users engage with sectors like online gambling, and our solution provides compliant age verification without forcing each user to repeatedly onboard across services.

For us, this partnership is about distribution. Once integrations go live—which should be in the coming months—we expect millions of users to begin interacting on the Concordium chain.

Stablecoins issued through PLTs will underpin those transactions.

Invezz: You mentioned age verification as one major utility. The other is payments. How do you see adoption—both for merchants and users—developing?

We already live in a digital-money world. People use banking apps and Apple Pay; cash is disappearing.

Concordium can’t solve every part of the payments stack, but we provide the infrastructure layer for compliant, programmable payments.

The key missing piece has always been tooling. If you try explaining mnemonic seed phrases to your parents, you’ll never see adoption.

Wallets need to work like modern fintech apps: show balances, handle keys in the background, and hide the crypto complexity.

The reason payments haven’t taken off in crypto is compliance. This is the solution that we bring to the table.

Real adoption comes from enabling compliant, privacy-preserving payments through seamless tooling.

Users shouldn’t need to know what a private key is. The strategy is to bring web2 users into web3 through real-world use cases, not by competing for the same 5 million monthly DeFi users.

A clear example is the adult-content sector in the UK, where accessing content now requires strict age checks.

Users don’t want to send passports to websites. Some sites use AI selfies for age estimation, but if there’s an anonymous verification option, most will pick it.

Our identity layer allows them to verify once and then interact privately across an ecosystem. This is how Web2 users inadvertently enter Web3.

The existing crypto industry is still small—around 20 million people hold crypto in a meaningful way—and most activity is concentrated in a handful of coins.

True growth will come from solving real problems for billions of web2 users, and Concordium is built for that.

Invezz: Let’s talk about regulation. How do you view the global regulatory landscape for crypto, especially over the past year?

For Concordium as a layer-one chain, regulation is less directly impactful because we provide infrastructure and technology.

For issuers and virtual asset service providers, regulation matters more. Clarity is improving.

Until recently, it was unclear what counted as a security. Crypto cannot simply be forced into old frameworks.

The UK, for example, is chaotic—they even tried to limit the number of stablecoins. But the US is taking a more constructive route, especially with legislation like the Genius Act and the upcoming Clarity Act.

This could influence global standards. The industry will grow regardless; over the last decade, they have tried to kill crypto several times, and it’s still here, stronger than ever.

Regulation exists to protect retail users, and that’s fair. If people are going to use stablecoins for payments, issuers must be properly regulated. Lack of clarity has slowed the industry.

We’ve been jumping from like one hot plate to the other right next to an abyss filled with lava.

Innovation needs room to develop. Over time, I expect clear distinctions around securities, exchanges, brokers, derivatives, and DeFi.

But no regulator will fully approve anonymous, traditional DeFi. It’s impossible to regulate something built entirely on anonymity.

Concordium’s middle-path—privacy-preserving but compliant—aligns with how real-world adoption will happen.

Invezz: On competition: Google recently integrated zero-knowledge proofs into its wallet. Visa, Stripe, and others have strong merchant networks. How do you plan to keep up with the competition?

First, their efforts validate the need for privacy-preserving infrastructure.

But notice something: if existing chains were fit for purpose, these companies wouldn’t need to build their own. They would simply build on Ethereum or Solana, yet they don’t.

The world is large, and different sectors require different infrastructure. Concordium focuses on areas these players won’t cover—especially sensitive, compliance-heavy use cases.

Competition is healthy. Concordium launched in 2021, but the timing wasn’t ideal; the market cycle didn’t support our value proposition. Now the world is catching up.

Our chain is open source and built by leading cryptographers.

Anyone can use it without assembling huge teams. If Google or Stripe build their own systems, that’s fine—but our architecture is ready today.

The broader point is that stablecoins need real utility. Many tokenized money-market funds exist, but they’re not used because onboarding is painful, and no secondary markets exist.

Concordium solves this by enabling compliant, automated interaction. In trade finance, for example, where margins are tight, using a yield-bearing stable asset and removing intermediaries like banks or escrow agents can unlock significant value.

That’s where real adoption lies—not in vanity metrics like TVL.

Invezz: Concordium’s fees are extremely low compared to traditional payments. Are they sustainable as you scale?

Yes. Concordium has stable, fiat-pegged fees. Right now the governance committee has decided that it’s more point one cent per transaction.

Block times are about two seconds, with two-to-four-second finality.

If a major network like Visa wanted to route global payments through Concordium and needed fees even lower, the chain could adjust them through governance.

Stability is crucial. Institutions need predictable costs. You can’t rely on chains where fees spike to hundreds of dollars during volatility—like Ethereum did on October 10th.

Our setup supports sponsored transactions as well. Verifying your Concordium ID with a zero-knowledge proof costs around a cent and could be bundled into a merchant subscription.

Most chains rely on variable gas mechanics that are not suitable for real-world, high-volume payments. Concordium’s model is far more scalable.

Invezz: Finally, what are your goals for the next one to five years? How do you see Concordium’s role evolving?

Success means bringing hundreds of millions—eventually a billion—web2 users into a web3 environment without them even realising it.

People already operate digitally: they pay with Apple Pay, bank through apps, and rarely use cash.

They don’t need to understand the internet’s plumbing, and they shouldn’t need to understand blockchain’s plumbing either.

If, in five years, people use digital wallets and begin paying for services with digital assets—naturally and seamlessly—then we’ve fulfilled the original promise of crypto.

That includes everything built since, from programmable money to privacy-preserving proofs.

Concordium aims to tackle problems in daily digital interactions and migrate them into a blockchain-based world without friction.

Most people don’t know how payments settle at Starbucks or how financial messaging works.

They shouldn’t need to. Our role is to make the underlying technology invisible.

Recent announcements with Bitcoin.com and Ledger show we’re on the right path.

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