Snapcard Launches MassPay for Bitcoin-Powered Cross-Border Payments

Bitcoin payment processor and e-wallet provider Snapcard has announced the launch of its MassPay platform today. This new platform and API will allow businesses to send cross-border payments of all sizes to their users en masse with nothing more than an email address, phone number, or Bitcoin address on file.

MassPay also allows businesses to make these mass payments without having to worry about the volatility risk associated with bitcoin, and the platform could be seen as highly advantageous for a variety of online industries.

How it works

Snapcard has provided Bitcoin Magazine with an internal company brief on how the MassPay system works:

1. A merchant or business decides it wants to integrate with the MassPay API, and Snapcard credits its account with the company’s local currency.
2. When a user or contractor triggers a payout via the API, the MassPay system is activated and sends a fiat-denominated amount of bitcoin to the recipient via an email, phone number or Bitcoin address.
3. The user or contractor is then notified that a payment has been received and will have the option to keep the bitcoin or withdraw it to his or her local currency for a 0.25 percent fee. The withdrawal process can take anywhere from three hours to three days depending on the country, and the fiat currency will be made available in a user’s bank account in most cases. Converting to fiat is currently available in 26 countries, although Snapcard hopes to expand this functionality to an additional 20-30 countries by the end of the year.

Launching with the Tango Card rewards platform

For the launch of their MassPay system, Snapcard has partnered with Tango Card, which is the largest rewards-as-a-service platform in the world. Tango Card has helped thousands of companies reward their users with gift cards in the past, but this new partnership with Snapcard will provide a more dynamic, flexible payout option for their clients’ users.

“Tango Card was able to use our new MassPay API to allow their users to receive Bitcoin Rewards at an email address, phone number or a Bitcoin address, all without taking on any of the currency risk,” Snapcard CEO Michael Dunworth explained.

More uses of this platform

Dunworth also described the original inspiration for MassPay, which involves a problem that affects a few different online industries. “We saw the opportunity for MassPay when we noticed partners being unable to pay out customers efficiently,” he said.

Whether it’s a rewards program for user activity or mass payments to publishers on a digital ad network, making small payments on a massive scale has been difficult in the past. This is Snapcard’s area of focus with MassPay.

From Snapcard’s perspective, the first four key areas where the MassPay platform will be useful are the mobile gaming industry, marketplaces, digital content sales and ad networks.

“Digital content companies are now able to streamline their payouts to all of their freelancers, artists and designers all with a simple API call,” Dunworth said. “Additionally, we’ve been working closely with a lot of game developers to make sure the MassPay API will plug in nicely to their gaming ecosystems.”

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Leading Silicon Valley VC Firm Shifts its Focus Toward Bitcoin

Kliner Perkins Caufield and Byers, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm best known for its investments in Google, AOL, Twitter, Uber and Amazon, has introduced a fund called the Edge Seed Fund, which is set to focus on helping early stage Bitcoin- and blockchain-based startups.

The Edge fund, led by Kleiner Perkins partners Mike Abbott and Anjney Midha, plans to offer investments of $250,000 to support selected startups in developing and programming platforms, products and services. The $4 million fund will be operated by former Google product manager Ruby Lee, and the founder of bitcoin and dogecoin transaction service Backlash, Roneil Rumberg.

To help early-stage startups from losing equity in its first few funding rounds, the firm is set to take a different approach for its investments. Instead of taking equity from its startups, the startups will issue a debt-like account called uncapped convertible notes to the VC firm, which can be reclaimed by the startup at any time.

Midha explained that such an approach will assert less pressure on the startups for another funding round, as it will not provide a startup with a specific valuation. Additionally, the startups can choose to reclaim the convertible notes and convert it to stocks completing their next funding round.

As of now, the firm has decided to take a more proactive approach and has begun to reach out for possible candidates, TechCrunch reported, “Midha will spend around a half hour to 45 minutes meeting with companies and then say they will give a final verdict on an investment in around 72 hours. The goal is to be as ‘founder friendly’ as possible — though, in theory, most firms would say they would be shooting for that goal.”

The establishment of the Edge fund follows the recent announcement of a popular startup accelerator, Boost VC’s announcement to end its focus on Bitcoin startups.

As Bitcoin Magazine reported on June 8, Boost VC stated that the firm will diversify its investments toward virtual reality technology, while still continuing to fund Bitcoin startups. Last year, Boost VC promised that the firm will accelerate and fund 100 Bitcoin companies by 2017. So far, Boost VC has successfully funded more than 50 startups and is set to fund more in its new startup program called Tribe 6.

As KPCB shifts its focus on hot startups in the Bitcoin and drone industry, the firm may possibly work with Boost VC to find potential candidates for its investments. Currently, the possible candidates are said to be BlockCypher and OneName, both of which have been part of the firm’s podcast series and were funded by Boost VC.

 

Photo Doc Searls / Flickr

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Jetcoin Launches Football App Stadia For Fans Worldwide

Jetcoin Press Release – Jetcoin is pleased to announce the launch of “Stadia”, a free sports app aimed at increasing fan engagement during live football.

London 22nd June, 2015 – As part of its strategy to penetrate the world of sports, Jetcoin has created Stadia for football fans. Unlike most sports apps whose main function is to provide real-time scores and a running commentary, Stadia’s focus is on optimising the experience of football fans during a game. By combining real-time interaction with social media integration, Stadia takes fans right into the heart of the action.

Stadia incorporates the flags and colours of 196 countries as well as the top 28 championships in the world, enabling fans to personalise their mobile phones or tablets by proudly displaying the flags and colours of their countries or favourite clubs.

Stadia gives fans a voice during live matches with its referee functions. Fans can, with a simple onscreen touch, announce an “Offsite”, “Red card”, “Yellow card”, “Foul” or simply share a moment of triumph by announcing a “Goal!”. With this function, fans can actually express their agreement or disagreement with a referee’s ruling.

Stadia also features a unique photo function that displays fans’ favourite countries or club flags at the bottom corner of pictures taken so that they can share memorable moments while showing support for their country and/or team. The photo function offers a direct share to Facebook and automatically saves the picture with the embedded flag to the “Stadia Picture” folder in the phone, thereby allowing fans to retrieve and share those memorable moments on other preferred social networks.

A free app powered by Jetcoin that optimises fan experience during live football, Stadia is currently available for download on Android and iStadia, its IOS version, is available on iTunes store for Apple users. For more information, please visit http://stadia.club

Besides new features that will enable fans to get seat upgrades and dedicated merchandising amongst others, Stadia/iStadia 2.0 will also be featuring the Jet Wallet holding jetcoins (JET).

About Jetcoin

Main sponsor of Serie A football team, A.C. ChievoVerona, ‘jetcoin’ is a new digital fuel issued by the Jetcoin Institute. It gives fans and supporters in the world of sports and entertainment a unique opportunity to benefit directly from the success of their favourite athletes and stars, both financially and also through unique lifestyle experiences such as seat upgrades, access to VIP boxes, exclusive events, behind-the-scenes and/or after-parties etc. Jetcoin Institute continues to work with partner teams, brands and service providers to offer exclusive deals to jetcoin holders.

For more information, visit http://ift.tt/1FXjSsM

Media Contact: pr@jetcoininstitute.com

 

 

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Abra Wants to be the Uber of Digital Cash, Says Founder Bill Barhydt at Exponential Finance 2015

Sponsored by CNBC and the prestigious Singularity University, the Exponential Finance 2015 took place in New York City on June 2 and 3.

The Singularity University is an educational center dedicated to high-impact, world-changing applications of disruptive, exponentially accelerating technologies. Exponential Finance 2015 examined how rapidly accelerating technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, crowdfunding, digital currencies, and robotics are rapidly disrupting businesses throughout the financial industry.

The Singularity University’s news portal Singularity Hub published a conference wrap-up titled “Exponential Finance: Who Will Be the Instagram or Uber of Finance?” Instagram and Uber are examples of what Peter Diamandis, co-founder and executive chairman of Singularity University, calls the disruptive potential of digital technology.

“Instagram was acquired for a billion dollars the same year Kodak went bankrupt,” writes Jason Dorrier. “Uber is a five-year-old transportation company worth $40 billion, and they don’t own a single car or bus.”

According to Diamandis, the blockchain will spark similarly disruptive innovations.

“At its core, bitcoin is a smart currency, designed by very forward-thinking engineers,” said Diamandis. “It eliminates the need for banks, gets rid of credit card fees, currency exchange fees, money transfer fees, and reduces the need for lawyers in transitions … all good things. Most importantly, it is an ‘exponential currency’ that will change the way we think about money.”

In his talk at Exponential Finance, Diamandis added that simple and ubiquitous apps based on blockchain technology will change the banking industry and the insurance industry.

It’s difficult to predict which companies will become the Instagram and Uber of exponential digital finance. Some of the established big players in the financial industry will probably continue to play an important role.

Using again the analogy with digital photography, while Kodak went bankrupt because it didn’t adapt fast enough, Canon transitioned to become a major player in the digital camera market. But the biggest and most disruptive innovations could come from applications and business models that few anticipate today, CNBC’s Bob Pisani pointed out.

Just a few imagined the iPhone in the ’60s, “Reality has surpassed science fiction,” said Pisani.

Abra, a blockchain company that wants to take a slice of the $550 billion global remittance market, is showing what can happen when several digital technologies converge in one product. Combining an Uber-like peer-to-peer network with smartphone technology and the blockchain, Abra permits sending cash as easy as sending a text message.

At Exponential Finance, Abra’s founder Bill Barhydt estimated that we’re three years away from modern smartphones becoming ubiquitous in the developing world. At that point, it’s possible many of the world’s unbanked billions in developing countries will skip traditional finance, a little like how they leapfrogged landlines for cell phones.

Barhydt stated that Abra aims to be the Uber of digital cash. Abra, which allows people to send and receive money without a bank account, is building a global network of “human ATM machines,” empowered end-users who don’t even have to understand Bitcoin to use the underlying blockchain technology embedded in the Abra app.

Barhydt described Abra as “the world’s first digital cash-based peer-to-peer mobile money transfer network.” The Abra app allows anyone with a smartphone to send money to any other smartphone anywhere on the planet any time of day. The goal of Abra is to be as “private as traditional cash, but without introducing any financial intermediary.”

“Traditional banking is really good at serving the global 5 percent to 10 percent of consumers who reach a certain income level,” Barhydt told CNN Money. “The reality is, the majority of the planet is a cash-based economy, and banking doesn’t work for those people.”

CNN Money’s take is that Abra makes banking more accessible while completely cutting out the actual bank – and bank accounts may be the next thing to go obsolete.

Blythe Masters, the former J.P. Morgan star who now leads Digital Asset Holdings, a technology company that uses distributed digital ledgers to address operational challenges and settlement latency in both digital and mainstream financial assets, said that financial blockchain applications will be measured in the trillions.

Augur, a fully-decentralized, open-source prediction market platform based on blockchain technology intended to revolutionize forecasting, decision-making and the manner in which information consensus is collected and aggregated, was selected as one of the five finalists in the “Breakthrough” category at the XCS Challenge at Exponential Finance 2015.

A short video on the conference website shows the enthusiastic reactions of many attendees after the conference.

“I feel we’re on the cusp of a step function in technology,” says Catheryne Nicholson, founder and CEO of blockchain API provider BlockCypher.

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