Can you imagine passing a day without using an app? Hardly so.

More and more apps are being developed to ease out everyday navigation and use certain resources.

Dejan Roljič and Matej Gregorčič are the two partners behind the revolutionary multi-functional wallet, Elly or Eligma, as it used to be called in the first place.

Slovenia is thought to be the Silicon Valley of Europe and the Balkans since it has given the world many brilliant young minds like Dejan and Matej.

How did two fellow entrepreneurs from the Balkans come up with an idea to develop an app that can make transactions easier than ever?

The power duo has created one of the most groundbreaking apps in the fintech world, and today, the company operates in over 60.000 stores and works with all major and minor cryptos, as well as credit cards.

Continue reading to unravel the inspiring story of Matej and Dejan, the godparents of Elly.

The Slow But Glorious Start

Even when Dejan was merely a kid, he has been showing interest in entrepreneurship and dreamed of making a difference in the world.

After completing his education at the prestigious Stanford University with flying colors, Dejan didn’t wait long to begin his, what would be, a rock-solid career in the fast-paced world of entrepreneurship.

After wrapping up his Stanford education, it didn’t take Dejan a lot of time to step up and shake things up. When he was in his twenties, Dejan started his first project called ABC Accelerator, connecting startups all over Silicon Valley and Europe.

Although Dejan did harbor a certain dose of skepticism, the startup was a smashing success. ABC Accelerator invested in over 150 startups in a short period of time - a perfect start for the young entrepreneur.

Before Elly was even a spark of an idea inside Dejan’s head, he met with fellow Slovenian and entrepreneur Matej Gregorčič.

In his teens, Matej was a self-driven young enthusiast; unlike his peers, Matej didn’t go about life daydreaming, but he started selling ad space for ski resorts. Young Matej found his new passion in marketing and, shortly after, founded an award-winning marketing agency, which counted 40 employees. After hitting a certain success milestone, Matej received recognition from the business world and started working with industry giants like Vodafone, Microsoft, HP, and many others.

Matej proved himself to be especially good in leadership and strategic planning - a role that opened many gilded doors for the young entrepreneurship aficionado.

Together with Dejan, the two were an ideal power combo for what is about to come in the future. Realizing the potential in online payments and the rise of crypto, Matej and Dejan knew there was no better time to take action.

Although Matej and Dejan had a slow start in the entrepreneurship world, the first jobs they had ever done turned out to be more important than they thought. Geared up with their skills and sheer willpower, the two partners didn’t stop there - they wanted more, and they got more!

The Road to Elly

It was 2017, and Dejan decided to go all-in and used whatever money he had left from ABC Accelerator to start something completely new. This time, the product will be oriented towards smart e-commerce solutions.

Since these kinds of products are associated with payments, it means maths and calculation must be involved. To make sure Dejan stays on top of the game, he asked Matej to come along on the adventure with his immense skills of maths and leadership. Dejan had envisioned a better future for online payments by shifting the process entirely online.

Although there are many apps similar to the one that Dejan has conjured in his mind, this one was about to be unique in various ways.

First of all, Dejan wanted to, sort of, compress all online payments into a single process, which will be the cornerstone of Elly.

The all-in-one solution for online payments was in Dejan’s head for some time, and with Matej entering the picture, the pieces of the puzzle started to fall in place.

Spending days and nights working on their idea, Matej and Dejan slowly began to see the contours of their imagination - Eligma, the predecessor of Elly.

As September of 2017 came approaching, the first version of the Eligma was already online as an e-wallet for cryptos. The product utilizes blockchain technology to establish communication standards for crypto networks. Although Eligma took some time to enter the fintech world, the partners persisted in their idea to make Eligma the ultimate e-wallet that will encompass everything surrounding online payments.

With such a brilliant fintech idea, it wasn’t long before Elly started to attract the attention of the first customers, little did they know - those were the lucky ones!

The First Lucky Users

Once people realized the full potential of Elly, the number of customers only grew.

Elly became the global facilitator of secure crypto payments, just when the popularity of cryptos was increasing. The first customers that were lucky enough to use all that Elly had to offer were crypto users, willing to try out something new and never-before-seen.

However, as is the case with almost every innovative idea, the first version of Elly was not that fast and it featured only a few cryptos and merely some payment options. Because the first release of Elly was not accepting all banking options, a lot of the prospective customers thought that Elly would offer limited options for them.

Other than being bold, Dejan and Matej were also realistic and knew that only a few online payment options wouldn't do the trick. After a seed round of investments in December of the same year, both partners received extra funding to improve Elly.

The sum of a $1.5 million investment was the ultimate jackpot, and quickly after that, Elly encompassed credit and debit cards. Once people realized how easy it was to use Elly, all of the rival options seemed not good enough.

Once cards and other digital currencies were applied, Elly witnessed the boom, as more and more crypto users were turning to Elly for their all-in-one simple payment solution.

The final version of Elly came with GoCrypto, an addition to the e-wallet as part of the infrastructure.

Everything Must Evolve

What drove Matej and Dejan to see their idea through was the thought that the standard online payment options must evolve.

In 2019, Elly witnessed the biggest investment since - $11.3 million in the initial offering, further boosting the popularity of Elly.

Almost a year later, in November 2020, Dejan managed to raise a Series A round investment from Bitcoin.com, for a whopping sum of $50 million!

Being able to amass such funds from the giant in the crypto world - Bitcoin, Dejan and Matej decided to further improve Eligma and began by renaming it to Elly.

As time went on, Elly incorporated more or less all known cryptocurrencies, and of course, credit and debit cards. The first cards to be added were Diners and Visa, and soon after, others followed suit.

Now that Dejan and Matej’s Elly is going towards the final version, the number of customers went off the roof. Elly quickly became present in over 60.000 stores and services that provide cryptocurrency payments. Elly started to accept payments from established companies such as AliPay, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and WeChat Pay, among others.

As of 2022, Dejan and Matej are yet to decide if Elly should go public or not. To date, the company is private and is operating with no need for selling stocks or anything else.

Where Is Elly Today?

Today, Elly is doing better than ever.

The company is providing premium services in its founders’ native Slovenia, along with Croatia. Dejan is the co-founder and CEO of Elly, while Matej serves as the company’s co-founder and advisor.

Despite Elly’s challenging beginnings in 2017, the groundbreaking product witnessed massive popularity in Europe, and then slowly entered the lives of the modern-day people of the world.

Today, Elly is one of the leaders in online payments in southern Europe and it’s the favored payment option for the member states of the European Union.

Elly is featured in Bitcoin Companies, Private Slovenia Companies, Europe Financial Services Companies, and others.

Relentlessly working its way up, Elly gathered the attention of many young enthusiasts that wanted to become part of the success story that is Elly, so the number of employees in Matej and Dejan’s company counts 50, headquartered in the capital of Slovenia - Ljubljana.

With the things we’ve witnessed Elly can do, there’s certainly no stopping for Dejan and Matej. So, we’ll just wait and see the ways our lives will become ever simpler thanks to the forward-thinking of Matej and Dejan.