Mainstreaming Payments on Blockchain – Anna Vladi

okay awesome hey guys great to be back here at is Denver so before I start talking about what blocks is doing for payments and how we're really bringing blockchain to the masses I'd like to give you a small history lesson on evolution of money so Big Bang happened about fourteen billion years ago and live on earth happened about four billion four billion years ago and money appeared about seven thousand years ago but before we had money we bartered right so if you had an orange oh you had an apple you could exchange one for the other so very quickly that scheme stopped working because some of the resources becoming scarce and a lot of other resources are becoming more available so that concept didn't work for a long time so that came to a commodity of money and at first we had spices because spices were scarce they were expensive I recently actually came to my bakery and I wanted to order a cake for my daughter that I usually order which was white chocolate vanilla cake and then the baker tells me oh we can make it anymore why not we're out of vanilla so buy some and she said it's very expensive and that kind of remind me of the first commodity of money you know being a spice so then the gold entered the society so at first people were basically carrying bricks right and it was not very not very useful to be carrying bricks around so the temples came to the rescue they said okay so come over store you're the golden bricks in the temple and then we will give you a receipt like an IOU so the priest was the first banker and the temple was the first bank and then they received four IOU was your letter of credit and of course later on the you know it was not very useful again to carry bricks around the coins were established because in the temples everybody was afraid of God then you know that people wouldn't wouldn't seal it so that worked for a little bit but then banks came in right so the first banks that appeared basically the they were said okay to come bring the gold will give you received and that receipt basically represents money right so people brought it in and then the banks started having reserves but they started having reserves they decided to do loans so for example our presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren she thought it was a great you know was a great achievement when you were they were able to sell their to the middle class families so the banks essentially said okay so we have gold but we really need to create some kind of currency so the next stage was fiat currency was introduced so the bank said okay forget about the gold why don't we just print money give you the money and that's your that's basically your money so that's when the money really stopped being backed by gold that's really the pivotal point and then what what banks did they said well carrying money around you know do you lose them you get stolen you can't replace it why don't you come and bring it to the bank leave it at the bank and then again we will give you you know a receipt an IOU letter of credit whatever that is so they kind of copied what temples did before and after that we have electronic currency right so right now when you go into your iPhone you login into your online banking what do you see you see digital money right you don't really see money you see digital money what that is it's code so your currency type right now in your online banking of Bank of America is what USD so this was a very interesting moment I gave this part this talk partially last year at their printing workshop right here and at the same time we were trying to solve this problem for payments we're trying to think well how do we actually bring the payments on the blockchain but at the same time wouldn't really give them the crypto we don't really give them the blockchain money so people don't really feel that they're touching something else so that was the pivotal moment for us to really understand how do we how do we really do this so let me introduce blocks so we are a payments platform on the blockchain and we are going through a certification right now with a major cards network for still being under NDA and being going through some of the contracts I can't really disclose who that is but I can at least talk about it so the problem that we're trying to solve is the following if you're familiar with payment space then you know in a transaction there are two sides you have an issuing side and then you have an acquiring side on both of the sides there are banks so that if you look at in your wallet right now you have a Bank of America card chase card so that's an issuing bank and then you also need an acquiring Bank which is when you slide your card at a Starbucks for example they need to get those five bucks for your latte so that happens when in issuing banks sends money to their acquiring banks and that sees both interchange and those fees are very very high so there are a lot of problems with their system right now it's it's it's on legacy technology there are a lot of players there's a lot of there are a lot of transactions that are really not necessary and everybody takes a piece of the pipe and at the end the merchants are the one who the ones that are paying the price for this so this is really where we are today now if you familiar with a company stripe so they did something great in 2009 when they appeared it was even more complicated than it is right now if you wanted to launch a card it was very very complex you had to work with companies like first data which are very cumbersome and complicated you had to sign up separately with issuing bank with acquiring bank so it was a very difficult task so what stripe did they actually brought all that together on latest greatest technology stack and make sure that all the branded cards that are lunch they don't have any issue any issues it's a it's a quick onboarding for them and they're kind of tying it all together so they're like up so they they actually broaden the concept of a processor it's called PSP so payment system processor PSP so stripe was really the first one and then others appeared McAra Square and the rest of them so now what are we trying to do so we are trying to help the merchants to get the money fast and we want them to have it as cheaply as possible so they don't have to pay the interchange fee the croolik the clearing through the transaction fees so we're trying to lower the cost for them so in order to do that we're using a stable talking so the stable talking is really what the merchant gets so when the when the user swipes the card the money gets locked in the issuing account and when we meant the token for the merchants so the merchants gifts gets the token and because we are partnering with a major cards network MC and abbreviation here we're able the merchants are able to transact with each other so once they get the stable talking and if the other merchants are on the network that money as good as USD so that's really the concept that we brought to them and that's what kind of I guess the business process that we're trying to change along with technology so what are the benefits so number one it will be the first PSP on the blockchain right now in the world it is 100 percent faster than the than the current settlement settlement time it is it is cheaper and acquiring because acquiring costs are gone interchange costigan fraud prevention fraud goes down significantly especially if the cards are digital and used with the biometrics of your phone we can provide kyc in AML we have all the licenses for that immediate settlements with the merchants integration with your product and no clearing so why are we doing this so we believe that we can bring this seamless to the user and we can cut the costs and we can provide the incentives to the merchants we would like to have the we would like to have them use the money right away on the network we want to help the digital wallets crypto wallets exchanges to lunch branded cards which would be much cheaper if you are compared to the incumbents right now and then again we are targeting and I'm bank industry such as cannabis for example ok any questions think I'm out of time [Music] you [Music]