The broader vision for digital currency payments

You may recall our announcement of exploring a UTRUST Point-of-sales solution last December. Many wondered what motivated us to pursue a software point-of-sales solution alongside our existing online platform and wallet. We decided to go into detail about the possibilities we are exploring and our motivation. So, how does point-of-sales fit in our vision for digital currency payments?

First and foremost, we want to reassure you: we stand committed to our initial vision and core focus. That means bringing the UTRUST platform and wallet to market while forging strong commercial partners for mass adoption.

The foundation of our value proposition continues to rely on the UTRUST payment platform — a robust and modular API that makes it easy for merchants to accept payments in multiple currencies. Additionally, we complement this with a consumer-focused mobile wallet, that simplifies digital currency payments, while making them seamless and easy. This combination is the core of the UTRUST ecosystem.

But, we also went beyond online. We forged key partnerships with hardware and software point-of-sales partners, making a compelling case for the use of the UTRUST platform and wallet in dedicated point-of-sale scenarios. We believe digital currency payments will be truly universal, used both online and for retail commerce. In this exploratory process, we discovered an untapped opportunity.

During our closed beta in the past few months, we have received valuable feedback from both our community and merchant networks. One recurring question from merchants was if it was possible to adapt our solution to work on retail POS scenarios with off-the-shelf hardware.

Currently, most of the existing POS solutions don’t support cryptocurrencies. This leaves merchants who want to accept digital payments without valid options which can be tailor-made to their needs. This difficulty, coupled with the lack of a plug-and-play solution is a huge barrier for brick-and-mortar merchants to integrate crypto as an additional payment method. Our mission is to enable simple and safe digital payments, anywhere in the world — we are starting with the online payments but we’ll soon be able to offer a solution to tackle the offline and in-store payments as well.

If you’ve been following our announcements you may recall our Blockchain Boat event at Websummit 2018. At the event, you could purchase a drink with the UTRUST beta wallet — an early stage feasibility test for a retail use-case. This has triggered a more extensive exploration of the concept and to additional research of current payment trends around the world. According to Grand View Research, the global point-of-sale terminals market size is expected to reach 116.06 billion USD by 2025, with a 9.9% CAGR (Compound annual growth rate), driven mainly by wireless technologies and increasing demand for mobile POS terminals.

The evolution of the Global POS terminals market according to Grand View Research (2014–2025)

Omnichannel — A unified store experience

A common trend we observe nowadays in commerce is Online to Offline (commonly abbreviated to O2O). This represents a marketing shift by businesses to provide a more seamless experience to customers from their websites to retail. The goal is to unify both virtual and physical store experiences while providing a tailored-made service that uses the strengths of both frontends. This includes payments as an integral part of this unifying experience.

User experience — A tale of two screens

Payments at the point-of-sale differ from their online-oriented counterpart in terms of user interaction and merchant requirements. From the user expectation, context-driven approach, functional and speed requirements, to merchant integration, each level has different needs. Unlike online payments, where users interact with their own hardware at every step, in retail payments, users interact with vendor-specific hardware, even if they are using their own digital wallet. Most merchants already use one or more point-of-sales devices, which allows them to accept different types of payment methods (from cash, cards, wechat, Apple/Android Pay, among others). These terminal systems are just a single component of a complex mesh of connected business software that includes: invoicing, accounting, inventory management and staff scheduling systems.

The digitisation of payments

Digital payments are the wave of the future, but retail merchants are faced with a dilemma. On one hand, they wish to accept as many payment options as possible from their customers. On the other, cost of acquisition, integration, testing and training are a limiting factor in the deployment of any new system. This problem has led to the rise of many new smart POS vendors, who attempt to offer more modern and modular hardware, capable of software upgrades on standard hardware, and decoupling purchase of hardware from business decisions. This has been the trend — away from single-purpose point-of-sales devices like credit card terminals towards modular systems based on more affordable hardware (e.g. tablet) and customised software. Coupled with the rise of first-generation digital payments, this transition had several positives side-effects:

On the customer side — making the payment digital-native and medium-agnostic. Decoupled from dedicated a vendor-specific device to a familiar mobile device; shifting away from physical inputs (swipes, presses) to a digital wallet in a user-owned device (abstract, intangible).

On the merchant side — making integration of new payment methods entirely software-based, and similar to their web page backend, rather than a separate subsystem.

The evolution of the POS Payment Terminal (1980–2020) ©Aite Group

The Adoption Puzzle — Beyond transactional speed

Many refer to speed as one of the problems facing point-of-sales adoption for a digital currency chain. While this is true at the purely technical level, with many solutions being developed, the technical elements are only one aspect of what makes for a compelling payment platform tailored to retail and usable by mainstream users. From our collected research and feedback, any successful digital currency solution at point-of-sales that seeks adoption at a wider scale needs to tackle all of the following points:

Be tailored to smart POS software or tablet/phone devices

Be compliant with national and federal regulations as a payment service provider

Be actively integrated with merchants invoicing systems and in their own national currency (direct bank account settlements)

Support multiple digital currencies

Support near-instant transactions on any of the supported digital currencies

Do all the above almost flawlessly and reliably from a technical perspective (as no vendor want to deal with VISA-like outages)

Have solid measures of protection for both parties (e.g. someone that can be contacted if issues in payment occur)

The UTRUST Platform and Wallet could be the perfect fit for the use-case if adapted to a point-of-sales scenario. The only missing element was a plugin for tablet/mobile devices to complement the use case.

UTRUST Checkout

We decided to implement this POS integration as a simple app for merchants that can be used in any smartphone or tablet and will enable an enrolled merchant to accept payments with ease. Merchants will benefit from all the advantages of the UTRUST Platform, such as instant conversion and settlements. It can also be used to receive payments from both virtual and physical stores.

Setup follows our philosophy — easy and seamless. After enrolling as a new merchant online, all it takes is downloading the merchant app, scanning a QR code in the dashboard and you are ready to receive digital currency payments.

What does this mean for users? It means more stores accepting cryptocurrency, an encompassing payment user-experience merging online and offline, instant payments at retail stores, all backed by a reliable buyer protection mechanism. In simple terms, UTRUST Checkout will become our 3rd pillar of the UTRUST ecosystem. The UTRUST Checkout will be integrated into our roadmap, with a testing phase at select retail venues and events. Its planned rollout will follow after the official launch of the UTRUST Platform and Wallet.

The UTRUST Ecosystem

Shaping the future of payments

The digitalisation of money is shaping a new economy and opening up a tremendous addressable market for UTRUST.

As the lines between online and offline blur, our mobile technology and strategy are in a prime position to lead the new money revolution. Commerce is now commerce anywhere: online, in-app and in-store. All blending together, driven by new customer behaviour and demand. We are builders and creators, reimagining the way digital currencies should work: enabling a safe and instant way to make payments anywhere, being it an online or an in-store transaction. By allowing merchants to accept payments anywhere and removing unfair fees, we are creating a more equal marketplace where everyone can participate collectively.

Building a seamless and easy user experience is never an easy or immediate process. The journey has been long and full of challenges, but we embrace them and stand committed to building a solid and reliable product.

We look forward to welcoming you to the UTRUST ecosystem soon 👋

Filipe