Initiative Q claims to be “tomorrow’s payment network”, and a lot of people are believing their claims without doubt and signing up on their website. I’m not qualified enough to conclude whether this is a scam or not. But, I’ll just leave you with these seven points so that you can research further, analyse and come to a conclusion by yourself.

It’s a straight-up pyramid scheme, not a doubt about that. Initiative Q does not want your money; as a traditional pyramid scheme might, but you’re buying into it with your personal data. Plus, to get the full benefits you have to invite more people and help build a… pyramid? Seems totally legit. Saar Wilf; the founder of Initiative Q, is NOT an “ex-PayPal” guy and certainly is not one of the founders of PayPal like the Initiative Q shills claim him to be. He simply sold a fraud-detection software startup to PayPal and was at no point directly involved in PayPal itself. They say that they will be better than the contemporaries but don’t provide any solid reasons as to why and how. They are basically saying, “We’ll be better at this because we will do this better.” They are showing the setbacks of others in the industry, without providing any real information on themselves. They are using scare tactics to make people join their network faster. The earlier you sign-up, higher the amount of ‘fictional’ money you get. This is not a good business practice and only benefits a minority of their users and that screams shady to me. Presently, they have no value. And there is no proof that they will have any value in the future, ever. You are getting paid in numbers which has no value. Q Tokens are not even exchangeable on Initiative Q’s own servers presently. Everything in their pitch is completely imaginary and does not exist yet. They literally don’t have a plan yet, and they still need to build their ‘superior’ payment network before the people who signed up for free cash will start using it. They say “By joining, you increase the chances of success, and accelerate the transformation of the payment industry,” but they have no facts, or proof to back them up. They are just making things up to appeal to the masses. They don’t have any proof whether your joining will increase their chances of success or accelerate the transformation of the payment industry.

This appears to be a scam for investors rather than customers. They’re not asking you for money or anything except your personal data, for now. People who sign up and their data should technically be safe. But that’s the present. Who knows what will happen in the future?

Even I signed up for Initiative Q, as hypocritical as it may sound. I’m not going to send invites to people and shill for them, though. And I’m not here to shame anyone for wanting some free money. Just be safe, and use a throwaway account if you really want some magic beans from a too-good-to-be-true pyramid scheme.