Summary: As the Provide engineering team draws closer to releasing Provide Payments, two new services now appear on the Provide Platform. Payment Hubs and a KYC service now appear as options to developers on the Provide Platform. Fully integrated services will be made available later this summer.

Previously, we announced that Provide will be dogfooding our platform—building a series of new services on the Provide Platform that are designed to make the benefits of blockchain more accessible. In short, we’re now our own customer—and the Platform is already seeing the benefits. Specifically, while building the Provide Payments, we created two new services that are now exposed on the Provide Platform.

For Payment Hubs, the API provides orchestration and access to layer 2 scaling solutions configured appropriately for the underlying network (i.e., state channels, lightning network, etc.). In the case of the KYC service, we are providing an API gateway to third-party KYC/AML providers, launching initially with the IdentityMind platform.

Payment Hubs for layer 2 scaling.

Provide Payments relies on a concept of payment channels, where a verified users can directly create smart payments between each other that accrue in the channel and settle based on agreed terms. Payment channels are generalized state channels, with the necessary supporting services to handle fiat currency (i.e., a settlement oracle for traditional ACH) as well as cryptocurrency off-ramps.

To build out payment channels, we are working with our good friends at Connext on our fork of the Indra and Indra-v2 repositories. Indra is an open source, peer-to-peer micropayment infrastructure built using payment channels on the Ethereum blockchain.

Fun fact: This project has its roots in developing SpankPay, a crypto payments service for the adult entertainment industry. Throughout my career, I’ve noticed some of the best tech comes out of the porn industry, and this is no different. We are really digging Indra.

We created several contributions to the project to date and look forward to continuing to work with Connext on Indra. Check out our documentation on how to deploy an Indra hub using Provide Platform.

“Payment channels offer a unique opportunity to disrupt traditional payments, especially as the technology matures, to offer a high degree of auditability and streaming payments. Faster settlement and overall efficiencies make a compelling value proposition for organizations to improve their bottom lines. We are excited to be working on this infrastructure.” Kyle Thomas, Provide CEO

Today you can deploy an Indra v1.x.x hub, connected your Provide application. When Indra v2.0.0 is released, you will be able to deploy the new version through Provide and orchestrate payment networks that use an onion-like protocol to provide anonymity to payment packets as they route through the network. Indra v2.0.0 will use the Counterfactual framework.

KYC Service for AML compliance.

Provide Payments complies with Know Your Customer and Know Your Business (KYC/KYB) guidelines and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations.

Built to be flexible, our new KYC service also allows a payment processor to complete its own KYC/KYB process. This is important for customers who choose to support their own wallets and payment processes. By directly collecting information, we also have the opportunity to simplify KYC/KYB verification across any payment processor.

The Provide Platform KYC service acts as an API gateway to third-party digital identity management platforms. This new service creates a standard, developer-friendly way to interact with digital signing identities in the context of AML compliance and fraud prevention.

We are open to adding support for additional third-party KYC/AML API providers. If you would like to see us add support for a new provider, please contact us.

Additional Resources