Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. BitPinas has no commercial relationship with any mentioned entity unless otherwise stated.
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“The goal is to give everyone the feel and the ease of use of a centralized app, but still being non-custodial, and using everything that is essentially decentralized.”
This was what Rafik Fellal, the vice president of growth for Aya, emphasized during an exclusive interview with BitPinas Editor-in-Chief Michael Mislos at Taipei Blockchain Week 2025, hinting that the application will be downloadable in the “next month or two.”
- Read other Taipei Blockchain Week 2025 interviews by BitPinas in this page.
- During the three-day event, BitPinas had a live coverage, which can be seen in this thread.
What is Aya Wallet?
Echoing what is written about as an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered wallet on its website, Aya (https://aya.cash/) is “really a mobile super app,” according to Fellal.
It is because it is not just a wallet built in, but it also has AI capabilities inside the mobile app, specifically an integrated large language model, which is an advanced AI system designed to process, understand, and generate human-like text.
Moreover, the executive also explained that Aya Wallet will have additional features like in-app per-creating option trading and the ability of users to have a crypto card.
“So, all of the advantages of DeFi and DEX, and non-custodial stuff, but with the same very simple-to-use app.”
Rafik Fellal, Vice President of Growth, Aya
Another feature of the super app, as per Fellal, is that users can save their private key and their mnemonic phrases in iCloud for iPhone users or Google Cloud for Android users.
“Usually, when you create a non-custodial wallet, you have to save your mnemonic phrase. You have to keep it safe, on a piece of paper, or some people copy-paste it but then lose it.
To connect, you do not have to put in the password or anything like that. It is essentially Face ID protection (from the Cloud)—so passkey protection for your credentials.”
Rafik Fellal, Vice President of Growth, Aya
Speaking about where the name “Aya” came from, Fellal shared that the co-founders of the supper app spent time in Japan, thus choosing a name that has significance in Japanese.
According to online family lifestyle magazine MomJunction, Aya is a familiar Japanese name meaning “design,” “colorful,” or “beautiful.”
Currently, Aya Wallet is hosting a campaign for free rewards and airdrops on Telegram as a bot. Interested airdrop farmers can go here.
Expansion Plans
According to Fellal, the goal of Aya is for users around the world to have access to the “best financial assets,” citing that many countries require their citizens to be accredited investors to access certain financial assets or on-ramp upfront with companies that can control their information and even with their funds.
“For us, the goal in a country like the Philippines is to allow the users to have access to better yield—essentially simple savings accounts—and the ability to spend their assets the way they want. So what we are trying to do is really democratize access to finance and access to good-yielding financial assets.”
Rafik Fellal, Vice President of Growth, Aya
The executive stressed it with confidence because he highlighted that the team has an experience handling previous web3 communities, citing that they are the same team that founded ONE OF US, a web3 sports community, in 2024.
“We have developed and launched previous products, and we also acquired some apps that have hundreds of thousands of monthly active users. So I would say for us, it is more that we have past communities from previous products, but we are also obviously building new ones.
And that is a very different way to build a community that we can then bring over to Aya. That has really allowed us to put the brand out there, to get people used to and to know the Aya brand without having to show a product just yet.”
Rafik Fellal, Vice President of Growth, Aya
This article is published on BitPinas: Aya Wallet Super App Aims to Bring High-Yield DeFi to the Masses Without The Complexities
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