RE: BlockPay featured in Forbes, spearheads business-ready blockchain tools
Looks quite promising. Was thinking about such this week...
I think one key issue to address - which you might want to bring up with the BlockPay team if you're in regular contact them - is potentially developing into the app some sort of instant conversion into BitUSD or UsdT...
I could foresee some merchants being hesitant to accept cryptocurrencies due to their volatily. Without instant conversions into their local currency, it could be possible for them to be paid in Bitcoin and lose 10%+/- in a day on that if they just leave it in BTC (or other crypto) - and would make for alot of accounting headaches trying to implement conversions into their bookkeeping procedures. Surely, there must be some system that could be setup that'd do an instant conversion into one of Bitshares/Tether's paired assets to lock in the value of the local currency. Such a price stabilization mechanism would surely be a great selling point to help convince merchants that might otherwise be hesitant because of that obstacle.
Not sure if BlockPay has been considering that, or how closely you're working with them - though given your position within the whole ecosystem & community, I think bringing the idea up and pushing for such a protocol to be implemented would greatly benefit everyone involved - from BlockPay, their investors, merchants, CCDEK, Bitshares' community, etc, etc.
Questions:
if there's no costs for merchants, but fees are paid by customers - what would the fees be for customers on purchases? ... answered upon reading the Forbes article = approximately $0.04. AWESOME
do you know / are you able to share any knowledge you might have about what's strategic marketing/sales plans are being executed to grow the merchant network?
Curious as to whether its just the tech that's developed, or how far along things are and how much power is being put behind the sales side of things to get it out into the marketplace...
Hi, rok sivante nice to meet you. Let me answer your questions as good as possible.
Yes, you are right, merchants hate the price volatility of Bitcoin and want to get a stable currency that does not kill their margins. That is why we convert all income currencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dash etc. all into BitUSD. Actually, the Merchant has a choice of +5 receiving currencies ( USD, EUR, CAD, CNY, ARS). We are working on providing a 1:1 payout from BitUSD to USD too. So that the merchant is as secure as possible. That is a great selling point for our terminals.
Fees
We charge a flat .5% fee to the consumer, and it works like a small tax. So when you want to pay for a bottle of water 1,5 USD + 0.05% fee. We additionally have to pay a small Blockchain network fee of max $0.04 for miners etc. We even have a few merchants who will cover the fees themselves so decrease the friction with the consumers.
Marketing
We have set up an international BlockPay Ambassador Team currently +50 people in +28 countries to promote and represent BlockPay. We have people in France, England, Germany, Spain, USA, Canada, Venezuela, Brazil, China, India, Australia, New Zealand and much more. Read more about our Ambassadors Program here https://blockpay.ch/community/blockpay-ambassador/
Additionally, we are working with several OEM partners and Point-Of-Sales software systems to integrate BlockPay natively. You will find BlockPay soon in Supermarkets, Restaurants, Retail stores, Vending machines, Travel agencies, Bars and much more. Watch out for our logo :)
Awesome! Glad to hear you're on top of it. :-)
To confirm: it is a 0.5% or 0.05% fee? (As had written both in the same paragraph?)