Photo: Flexa / Medium
After introducing crypto payments to its SPEDN app earlier in May 2019, merchants payment startup Flexa plans to bring this functionality to other apps as well. This is a massive step by Flexa to boost up crypto spending in the global economy.
Flexa plans to implement this project by staking its native cryptocurrency Flexacoin (FXC). Flexa also says that by staking the FXC tokens, any application can provide merchant services. However, the most common use-case would be wallets. Thus, applications which can hold crypto for the users could stake FXC tokens and further enable direct-to-merchant payments.
Besides, Flexa will ensure a robust infrastructure in place which can allow apps to seamlessly send payments without any interference of malicious apps to reverse the transactions. In addition to the apps themselves staking Flexacoin, users can also contribute to the stake. The benefit of this is all stakers can share the fees charged upon using Flexa’s payment rails.
Flexa CEO Tyler Spalding told CoinDesk that his company won’t be “another fee-taking entity”. Rather they plan to completely return the fees to all the stakers. Users offering their stake in the app will get a fee redemption proportional to their stake offered.
Flexa’s plan is to boost up the price of FXC tokens by getting them into the mainstream economy. The company has permanently fixed the FXC supply to 100 billion tokens. Spalding said:
“We think that good token economics are way better than a business model. All the value we are providing to the community is in the token.”
By the end of September 2019, Flexa’s SPEDN app will open up a stake. Checkout this official post from Flexa to understand how stakers choose where to stake their Flexacoins.
The Roadmap Ahead
Speaking to CoinDesk, Spadling said that providing merchant trial rails by Flexa is not enough. Merchants are wanting to have more privacy without disclosing their business details to their competitors. Flexa is working on finalizing the technology and deciding how much of the activity to keep off-chain thereby facilitating payments in batches.
Flexa is reportedly considering zero-knowledge proofs, a technology used by privacy coin ZCash. Spalding said:
“By using a zero-knowledge proof we can ensure that you are getting paid appropriately as a staker, but without knowing how much money is going through the system”.
Of course, zero-knowledge proofs are part of Flexa’s long term plans and won’t be available anytime soon. Another proposal for Flexa’s long term plan is getting more merchants to finalize payments in crypto instead of fiat.
Spadling said that Flexa’s initial merchant partners have been big companies like Barnes & Noble, GameStop, Jamba Juice, etc. However, it is partnering with some small and medium scale enterprises as well.
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