A Frictionless Payment Mechanism

As we have seen in previous blog entries, Expercoin’s primary purpose is to provide governance of its ecosystem through the tokenization of interactions. However, like all cryptocurrencies, it can also be used for payments. Here are some compelling reasons for doing so.

Cross-Border Payments

The Experfy Marketplace currently uses Stripe, which supports merely twenty-five countries, leaving out many important geographies. For instance, Stripe does not support payments to India, within which approximately ten percent of Experfy’s providers reside. A payment to a freelancer or an instructor outside the U.S. by wire transfer can cost as much as $50 per transaction to the sender, not to mention manual work that can result in expensive mistakes. The recipient may also incur bank fees for receiving the wire transfer. We believe the use of Expercoin will create a frictionless payment mechanism and enable us to attract more talent from around the globe by giving our experts a fast and low-cost payment option.

Declined Credit Card Transactions

When users are purchasing training on Experfy, as many as 5% of international credit card transactions are declined by Stripe, often causing lost business. To put this in perspective, each declined transaction requires follow-up and we have to manually send an invoice from a different payment processor — QuickBooks — to the customer because Stripe refuses to process a perfectly legitimate transaction.

A declined charge by Stripe. The same charge was successfully processed using QuickBooks, suggesting aggressive risk management by the former payment processor, not the customer’s bank.

We firmly believe the use of Expercoin will disintermediate bank networks such as Visa and payment processors such as Stripe, enabling us to ensure each that the customer using Expercoin is able to purchase both training and consulting in a frictionless manner.

Savings on Credit Card Transaction Fees

Experfy is currently pays Stripe approximately 3% in credit card processing fees. As we launch Republics and adopt Expercoin, it would bring payment processing fees for the Republics to close to a statistical zero and eliminate the headaches of dealing with declined transactions described above.

Financial Aid for the Disadvantaged

Experfy holds the conviction that those from the disadvantaged sectors of society should be prioritized to receive an affordable education. We intend to introduce peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, allowing the affluent to fund the disadvantaged and underrepresented, with blockchain allowing for registration and tokenization of loan assets. Expercoin plans to partner with non-profits and government agencies to help subsidize the education costs for the marginalized and underrepresented sections of society across the globe.