Since releasing our Plutus white paper back in 2016, we embarked on the task of funding our project and held a successful 9-day flash crowd sale which raised circa US$1 million worth of BTC and ETH. From here, we went on to develop and release several products such as our advanced decentralised P2P technology for crypto-to-fiat transactions (PlutusDEX) and a mobile app for fiat-to-crypto conversions.

Last year we faced some major obstacles, mainly due to red tapes imposed on the industry by our partners and regulators, but we have overcome those challenges and also achieved many of our intended goals. To see a complete list of our achievements over 2018, please read our company blog post detailing the entire year’s developments here.

The Current Model

Our current platform is in open public beta and allows users to exchange between crypto and fiat. The selling feature is only available on the mobile app whereas the buying feature can be accessed via the PlutusDEX web platform. This was deliberate as the mobile app was intended to act strictly as a tool for money management and payments, enabling the sale of crypto in return for fiat which can then be used for everyday purchases via the app or Plutus Debit Card. Meanwhile, the web platform (PlutusDEX) was designed to provide liquidity for the app users, acting as fuel for the payment network as outlined in the Plutus white paper.

Since the release of our beta products last year, we have gathered useful feedback and data through user surveys and extensive research in order to improve our platform. We have used this information to understand the obstacles in the user journey and remove any points of friction, the result is a complete overhaul of the user flow on both mobile and web interfaces as well as a range of additional features.

Plutus 2.0

Financial Services

Plutus will no longer be restricted to just crypto deposits. Plutus 2.0 will provide a range of new financial service features including the ability to initiate direct EUR and GBP deposits to load your Plutus debit card. You will be able to open a Plutus account from anywhere within the UK and over 30 European countries (EEA region) to send and receive Euros or Pound Sterlings as you wish; the set-up is done instantly without the need for credit checks. You will have complete control over your assets to manage as you please, making seamless payments, transfers and withdrawals worldwide.

Plutus 2.0 will promise same-day EUR settlements using SEPA transfers. This will enable you to rapidly move funds directly between your Plutus account and alternative bank accounts (yours or others). Deposits are instant and withdrawals completed within hours.

Pluton Reward System

Our platform comes complete with our own native loyalty rewards token, Pluton (PLU). Every time you load your virtual or physical debit balance with EUR or GBP, you will receive up to 3% back in the form of PLU (Pluton Yellow Paper). You can redeem the earned PLU for fiat using our built-in conversion tool (PlutusDEX) to load your account balance.

Pluton is a great mechanism to increase adoption. It’s emitted to users of the Plutus debit card which will be available to millions of customers in both the UK and in Europe. These essential features will inadvertently introduce cryptocurrencies into the real world and help accelerate mass adoption.

Additionally, we are adding further value to our rewards programme by creating a higher use case for PLU; such as the ability to redeem PLU for additional services offered by Plutus and our mainstream partners. Moving forward, our loyal customers will experience numerous benefits through their PLU rewards. More on this will be revealed in the coming weeks.

Revenue Model

Previously, users were able to avoid the fees incurred for loading their spending balance with Bitcoin and Ether by using Pluton. Plutus 2.0 no longer plans to charge fees for deposits of any kind, instead, we are moving to a tiered fee subscription model. Your earned PLU can also be redeemed for free subscriptions to our premium services and many other upcoming features.

Product Convergence

Plutus provides a complete non-custodial way of exchanging crypto and fiat using its built-in peer-to-peer decentralised technology, the PlutusDEX. On the current version, both the selling of crypto to fiat and withdrawal is done via the mobile app, and the buying is done via the web interface.

We are now making buy and sell functionality available on both device types (desktop and mobile). The PlutusDEX will be merged with our app into one place to produce an all-encompassing product, combining the two will greatly improve the user experience of our platform and provide a multi-functional application.

User Journey

Improving the user journey has been the highest priority for myself and the team while working on this update. As a non-custodial application, Plutus cannot provide its own crypto wallet to users; in order to create a seamless in-app experience, we are integrating a well-known decentralised third-party wallet to allow an easier user interface for the buying and selling of crypto.

Research & Development

We are currently looking into tools that will bring greater liquidity to the platform. We want to ensure all buy and sell orders fill instantly at the market spot rate in order to provide users with on-the-go trading options.

The PlutusDEX uses a weighted average of rates from all the top exchanges to execute trades at spot rate and our next aim is faster conversions for all our available assets. This will not be part of the approaching upgrade but it will be added to the feature set at a later date.

In Summary

We have some impressive developments arriving in 2019 and over the next few months, we look forward to releasing our extensive feature sets mentioned in this article. This has been a great journey so far for the Plutus team and we are excited to embark on the next stages of development.

We are proud to be one of the rare start-ups out of several thousand ICO’s and crowd sales to have gone from a white paper to a functioning product, and we have done so at a fraction of the funding compared to industry standards whilst also acquiring a strong team of professionals along the way.

In the upcoming Plutus 2.0 release (due by 31st March 2019), we are committed to improving our platform and delivering on the promise of an easy to use digital financial service and payments platform.

I will be holding an AMA with the Plutus team on Reddit at 2pm GMT on Monday 25th Feb to answer your questions on any of the above. In the meantime, you can join our official Telegram channel to speak with a Plutus team member.