PumaPay – Unique payment protocol, already partnering with SEXY STREAMERS?
You have clicked on this title, wondering what does crypto tokens have in common with the adult entertainment. Could this be just a clickbait or it is something real? First of all – it is real, but more on that later. Now I want to introduce you one new and truly innovative payment protocol, aiming to become the main payment method in the future. Blockchain technology, decentralization and innovation are not just buzz words, when talking of this protocol.
What is PumaPay?
Our current payment systems are far away from perfect. While banks are looking secure and easy to use, they are having security and fraud problems and too much of the user’s payment is gone in form of different fees. Let’s say that you are buying something with your banking card, for instance some beer for your party tonight. The price of your purchase is 100$. On top of that you are paying at least 3 more dollars in form of interchange, assessment and markup fees. And that is the price of your transaction. Does it seem ok for you? Did you know that there are nearly 300 different fees, for every transaction you make? There are a large number of intermediaries in the banking system, each of which wants its piece of the pie. And that is all due to the centralized nature of global banking system. And not to mention that frauds are big problem for the banking system. When a fraud is proven the banks usually are reversing the payment back, refunding the cardholder. This process is called chargeback. The biggest losers when this happens are the merchants, to which the transaction was originally sent. There are even more problems in the banking system, but for now let’s see what does PumaPay has to offer.
PumaPay’s vision is to use the promising blockchain technology and to implement it in innovative way. It can easily address the problems that I already mentioned very well and on top of that to add flexibility, scalability and decentralization. Such protocol is perfect to manage transactions between merchant and customer in our everyday lives. But PumaPay is even more: in its core is its innovative way to perform a transaction, but more on that later. PumaPay is fully open source, which means that every developer can improve the platform. And yes, platform, because PumaPay is not only a protocol, but also a platform including its wallet and allowing third party companies to provide services on it. One of the PumaPay’s goals is to move from centralized platform (for meeting the needs of initial launch), trough hybrid system, to a fully decentralized one, leaded by its community.
I already mentioned about an innovation several times, but what this innovation is? Instead of “pushing” funds from buyer to seller, the seller is just pulling its funds from the buyer’s account. That little change is creating a “butterfly effect” affecting every single part of the protocol, making it unique. The pulling is handled by smart contracts. The blockchain itself contains several main “blocks”. Let’s start with the obvious – a wallet. The wallet contains its public address and its private key. The public address is like wallet’s ID while the private key is like the password, needed to decrypt some of the user’s information. The next “block is the Account”, where are stored parameters like balance, and other “blocks” attached to the account. There are two types of “blocks” attaching to the account – pull contracts and limiters. Pull contracts can be considered as transactions, but they can be used in many other ways for instance for subscriptions and other interesting ways that I will mention later. Limiters are pretty much speaking for themselves. They are barriers, not allowing certain action, being permission to certain account to pull funds or limitation to monthly spending.
There are great examples how this protocol can be used in everyday situations. It can be used for subscriptions, for let’s say a newspaper or a magazine. The money is pulled from buyer’s account every month, in the period of one year. Of course it can be used for normal payments, like in a restaurant too as a single payment. Interesting example is pay per use. A customer is paying based on time, for example a parking spot or other time connected service. The price in the example is set to a dollar per hour and the charge interval to 15 minutes. Automatically every 15 minutes a quarter is pulled from client’s account, until he leaves the parking, ending the cycle. The use case of utility bills is also implemented. It is a contract which pulls a variable amount of funds in certain time. The amount can be directly taken by for example the household’s electric meter. The pulled funds can be shared between multiple accounts and there is an option for restriction to account. This restriction is perfect solution for parents, because they can approve or deny their kids’ purchases remotely. Before the pull is performed the contract is asking the “Master” account does it approve the purchase. That way if the kid wants to purchase a breakfast, the parent will approve, but if the kid wants to purchase sweets the parent just can deny. This can be very useful when the funds are shared in a family or a company, to have each member’s approval for the purchases.
How will PumaPay drive adoption?
PumaPay understands that for a successful project in the crypto world the great technology and possibilities are not enough. They are realizing that they need very good adoption in order to succeed in the business. So they crafted a strategy to raise the usage of their platform that rests on four main pillars. They are: “early adopters”, “launch partner”, “PumaPay Pride” and “third party extention services and products”. The first pillar’s goal is to have as much as possible merchants adopted the protocol. For their early adoption they will be rewarded with PumaPay tokens. There are already a lot of early adopters that are ready to adopt the protocol in their businesses. This is important, because it makes the market where the PumaPay tokens can be spent and used as a regular payment system.
The second pillar is the launch partner. Its role is to closely integrate the PumaPay token. This launch partner is ImLive.com – A leading website, serving adult entertainment industry and actually the first to integrate livestreaming in the industry. A well-known for this industry is that it is one of the first that are implementing new technologies, and the most of time these technologies are lately very widely used. The industry is successful, because it serves primary needs in form of entertainment, which means that there is always market for it. ImLive.com has agreed to create platform, where PumaPay tokens are the only payment means. Those way users of the platform are going to get used to how the tokens are working and how to use them. With nearly 50 000 service providers and around 15 000 new users per day the usage of the platform is high, so will be the usage of PumaPay when implemented. Overall this is genius way of “teaching” users how to use a platform. Once teached how to use tokens, users will easily use them in other industries.
The third and fourth pillars are both considered extension services. PumaPay Pride is example for such a service, which is also a very important part of the platform. Its role is to be implemented in the wallet and to show only the businesses accepting PumaPay tokens and to be an example for a third party extension. I like the way PumaPay are achieving two things in one project. Both promotion of PumaPay accepting businesses and example for third party extensions are very important. Third party extensions are very important for the platform because overall they are additional value for the platform. They are bringing new functionalities and with more functionality the value of the platform is higher too. PumaPay are giving some examples for third party extensions in their whitepaper, which they think will be the most essential for the platform’s development. They are giving to developers a good idea of what they can start with, developing extensions for PumaPay, which can be very useful and beneficial for the developer.
Project Overview
As we already have talked about the popularization of PumaPay and how they plan to improve it using their four pillars. One very important place for popularization is the social networks. PumaPay have achieved pretty big community (mainly in Telegram). But let the numbers talk for themselves. PumaPay is having around three thousand followers in Facebook, over four thousand in Twitter and the very serious number of over 17 000 in Telegram! Their posts are not spam, instead they are mostly pretty interesting articles from their blog and some pictures and posts related to PumaPay’s team. That is great and the articles are really worth to read.
In order for the work to flow easily the project needs a great team and even greater leaders. PumaPay is having very professional, experienced and motivated team. Its leader is Yoav Dror, CEO, a blockchain enthusiast and amazing strategic planner with over 20 years of experience in the business. Another interesting member of the team is Giorgos Kouttellos, Chief Blockchain Architect. He is an experienced engineer and IT professional, who has worked for IBM as a blockchain engineer. He has contributed in a lot of other blockchain related projects. Overall the team is pretty big, with a lot of different specialists in almost every sphere. The team is multinational and it is looking very professionally. I like the mix of experienced in the business specialists and talented, full with motivation young members of the team.
PumaPay’s website looks and works great. When you open it there is cool load animation, which is looking a little bit longer than what I would like, but directly after that the user is welcomed with fireworks. The website is very professionally made in terms of usability, but something like color scheme is hard to find, because except the white background the accent colors are different like bowl of candy. You can find any needed information related to PumaPay, and in their forum even related to blockchain technology and market. In terms of design I personally don’t like it too much but it is OK.
PumaPay is having very well made whitepaper. It is very professionally made with useful illustrations and serving both casual users and specialists who wants to understand the topics in engineering detail. The whitepaper is written in very small font and it contains 35 pages. There are 13 main topics, all of which are very well explained. The language is very professional, and I really like the way examples are explained in both simple everyday language as well as in more technical words. This is the way to be understood by the majority of the audience.
PumaPay’s roadmap starts in Q2 of 2018, with the TGE of PumaPay tokens. The next steps are launching the first versions of PumaPay wallet and their SDK for third party extensions. Somewhere then is the integration with ImLive.com. In Q3 2018 there will be launched new versions of the wallet and the SDK. Interesting is the “testing of next gen, blockchain”, but noting is reviewed yet. Then will be also launching PullContract Wizard and PumaPay pride. In the period up to Q1 of 2019 will be launched again new versions of the wallet and SDK, as well as more integration with ImLive.com and early adopters. And the known part of the whitepaper ends here, because the rest will be figured out, based on the amount of integration, usage and popularity of PumaPay.
Conclusion
PumaPay is one amazing project, with high aim to become common and even main payment method in every industry. It provides some really innovative technology, combined with highest level marketing strategies in order to achieve its goals. The pull contracts can be used in huge variety of situations, making it very useful, while the third party extensions are adding even more usability and value to the platform as a whole. The marketing and close implementation with the launch partner is genius marketing strategy, which can easily raise the platform to the top. The team is very professional, the website is overall good and the whitepaper is very well written. Everything in PumaPay is on point. Only the time will show whether they will succeed.
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