1. Integrating with fiat (Verify Payments)

Since most people store their money in banks, it follows that we must find a way to integrate with banks. Our solution, Verify Payments, does just that: integrate directly with banks.

We’re releasing an alpha version of Verify Payments this coming week. Essentially, we integrate with banks through their own private APIs (since most banks don’t have public APIs) and provide a quick, low cost bank-to-bank transfer solution to move funds from buyer to seller.

This description begs many questions, so let’s address the major ones below:

Q) Why bank transfers and not credit cards?

A) This is detailed in the previous post; the primary reason is that credit card transactions are reversible (and bank transfers are not). Accepting credit cards would expose Verify to huge risks [3][4] even after a transfer is “completed”[5].

Q) The primary challenge with bank transfers today is that they are both slow and expensive. How do you address this?

A) Our Verify Payments solution provides instant, low-cost transfers. We achieve this through a combination of two techniques. The first involves integrating with banks, either through an official partnership or a direct integration with their online banking interface. The second technique is not one we can disclose publicly yet; the concept revolves around creating a layer above the banks that would enable low-cost transfers between banks on this network.

Through an early version of the Verify Payments API, we were able to conduct a bank-to-bank transfer in just over 20 seconds. That’s the total time it took to actually move funds from one account to another in the UAE (This demo ran on Emirates NBD, one of the largest banks in the UAE):

Before Verify Payments, no UAE bank-to-bank transfers could be concluded sooner than next business day. This is game-changing.

We’re already beta-testing the solution out with various prospective customers. As you can imagine, a solution like Verify Payments would be incredibly useful to crypto exchanges, marketplaces and various other customer segments.

We’re also working with our attorneys at King & Spalding and local regulators to ensure that Verify is fully compliant with the relevant financial regulations.