Strategic Partnerships

ChangeNOW has appointed Martin Masser, a former TON executive, as Director of Strategic Partnerships to accelerate its transition from a standalone crypto exchange into a unified super app that consolidates buying, storage, swaps, trading and asset management. For institutional investors evaluating infrastructure plays in crypto, the hire signals ChangeNOW’s shift toward solving a concrete pain point: the fragmented user experience that currently requires switching between multiple platforms and networks.

• Martin Masser, former TON executive, joins ChangeNOW as Director of Strategic Partnerships effective August 2026
• ChangeNOW is transitioning from standalone exchange to super app combining buy, store, swap, trade, send, receive and grow functions
• Masser’s mandate focuses on partnerships that simplify user experience, not accumulating announcements alone

• 2017 Year ChangeNOW launched as instant exchange, now expanding into integrated super app
• 6 Core crypto activities consolidated into single ChangeNOW environment for consumers
• 4 Integrated business tools: crypto payments, exchange, stablecoin settlement, digital asset management

ChangeNOW, which began in 2017 as a fast and secure instant exchange, is restructuring itself around a super app model that consolidates the fragmented crypto user experience into a single product.

The platform’s strategic shift targets a real market inefficiency: consumers and businesses today must navigate between separate wallets, networks, exchanges and fintech providers to complete routine crypto transactions.

Masser’s appointment as Director of Strategic Partnerships reflects ChangeNOW’s recognition that executing this consolidation requires deep ecosystem relationships, not just product engineering.

The super app strategy addresses what remains unsolved across the crypto infrastructure layer. While individual components, wallets, staking services, swaps, stablecoins and payment rails, have matured significantly, no dominant platform has yet unified them seamlessly for institutional or retail users.

ChangeNOW’s approach is to embed this complexity within the product itself, removing the need for users to switch between platforms, understand multiple network topologies or manually assemble pieces into a coherent workflow.

Masser’s TON Background and Cross-Sector Credibility Shape ChangeNOW’s Partnership Strategy

Masser brings operational experience across traditional banking, Web2 and Web3 environments, with particular depth in TON’s blockchain ecosystem. His prior roles in growth and business development within the TON space position him to navigate conversations with layer-1 networks, wallet operators and fintech infrastructure providers simultaneously.

This cross-sector fluency is essential for ChangeNOW’s super app vision, which depends on integrations that function across competing network ecosystems and legacy financial rails.

Pauline Shangett, ChangeNOW’s Chief Strategy Officer, described Masser’s arrival as filling a specific gap: “He knows what the technology can do, what the business needs and how to make the market pay attention.” That assessment identifies three distinct competencies, technical literacy, commercial acumen, and narrative capability, that institutional infrastructure plays require in senior partnership roles.

For investors evaluating ChangeNOW’s execution risk, the hire suggests management is thinking strategically about which relationships drive product value rather than pursuing partnership announcements as vanity metrics.

Masser himself framed his mandate narrowly: “The best partnerships create access, adoption and attention.”

This formulation implies a disciplined approach to ecosystem relationships. Access refers to integrations that expand ChangeNOW’s product surface, new networks, asset classes or payment rails. Adoption speaks to partnerships that drive user growth, implying selection criteria around distribution and network effects rather than mere technical compatibility.

Attention signals partnerships that communicate market leadership, suggesting Masser will prioritize relationships with high-profile infrastructure providers or consumer crypto applications that shape narrative momentum.

ChangeNOW’s Super App Model Targets Institutional Inefficiency in Crypto Operations

The super app consolidation ChangeNOW is pursuing directly addresses cost and friction in crypto operations for both institutional and retail users. A consumer managing digital assets must today maintain accounts across exchanges, custodians, staking platforms and wallet providers, each with its own authentication, fee structure and settlement timing.

For businesses processing crypto payments or managing stablecoin settlement, the operational overhead includes integrating multiple APIs, reconciling balances across venues and managing counterparty risk across separate platforms.

ChangeNOW’s architecture is designed to internalize these coordination costs. The platform’s stated capabilities, buying, storage, swaps, trading, staking and asset management, represent the core transaction types that crypto users repeat frequently.

By consolidating them into a single interface with unified settlement and risk management, ChangeNOW reduces the cognitive and operational load of crypto asset management.

For institutional users, this simplification compounds: a treasury department managing corporate crypto holdings can execute deposits, conversions between stablecoin types, yield generation and withdrawals through a single API, reducing integration complexity and operational audit surface.

ChangeNOW is also developing a parallel product suite for business clients, including integrated crypto payments, exchange functionality, stablecoin settlement and Web3 integrations.

This dual-track strategy, consumer super app and business infrastructure, mirrors the playbook used by payment processors like Stripe or Square, which grew by simultaneously serving individual merchants and larger platforms.

For institutional investors, the implication is that ChangeNOW is targeting both top-down adoption (enterprise clients adopting integrated crypto payment infrastructure) and bottom-up growth (individual users consolidating their crypto operations). Masser’s partnerships focus will likely emphasize both vectors, identifying wallets, stablecoins and networks that serve either segment or both.

Partnership Strategy and Market Adoption Will Determine Execution Success in 2026-2027

The success of ChangeNOW’s super app transition depends on completing a set of integrations that create genuine operational advantage over using separate platforms.

Masser’s stated openness to partnerships, “If you are building wallets, networks, payments, stablecoins, fintech infrastructure, consumer crypto or Web3 products, I want to hear from you”, suggests ChangeNOW is in active partnership negotiation with wallet operators, stablecoin issuers and layer-1 networks.

The critical metric will not be the number of partnerships announced, but whether those relationships reduce friction points that currently force users to switch platforms.

The crypto super app category remains underfilled at the institutional level despite multiple attempts. Coinbase’s evolution toward integrated services, Kraken’s addition of staking and custody, and FTX’s pre-collapse portfolio of integrated services all demonstrated that users will adopt consolidated platforms when switching costs are high and feature parity is credible.

However, the market has not yet crowned a dominant super app, leaving significant room for a platform that solves the experience problem convincingly.

Masser’s appointment occurs at a moment when multiple tailwinds favor super app adoption: institutional demand for crypto operations infrastructure is rising, regulatory clarity around stablecoin settlement is improving in major jurisdictions, and interoperability between networks has advanced technically.

ChangeNOW’s ability to convert these conditions into market share depends on partnerships that are both credible and exclusive enough to create defensible advantages over competitors pursuing the same super app model.

The concrete test of Masser’s strategy will emerge in the next 12-18 months through the specific partnerships ChangeNOW announces and the product functionality those partnerships unlock. Investors should track whether ChangeNOW’s partnership announcements include tier-1 networks (Ethereum, Solana, TON), major wallet providers (MetaMask, Ledger, Trezor) or stablecoin issuers (Circle, Tether, Paxos) that would signal real integration depth, versus smaller or less critical providers that might indicate limited access or prioritization. The critical question remains whether any single platform can achieve the network effects necessary to consolidate crypto operations before competitive alternatives mature.