Kyber Network and Request Network today announced an important partnership that will enhance the consumer experience by making Kyber Network a token conversion option within Request Network, and expand Kyber Network’s presence at point-of-sale. This partnership is set to provide increased value to both Kyber Network, Request Network users and merchants.

Payment landscape today

The payment ecosystem today has evolved into a complex global machine, a far cry from the simple one-on-one transaction that it used to be. This world of global payment processing now includes card networks, gateways, acquirers, processors, and more. As a result of the complexities of the global payment ecosystem, there are a lot of silos in between services, making the payment landscape unnecessarily inefficient.

As an illustration of a segment of the bigger picture, every time when a person receives an invoice, a receipt, or make a payment online, a third party is used to generate and share this request. This third party is usually PayPal, Stripe or any accounting software. When a third party is engaged, the user has to disclose financial information to these companies, and risk losing proprietary ownership of the information to other unintended individuals due to data leaks or hacking.

Bringing more choices to both consumers and merchants

In view of the problems that were highlighted, the use cases of blockchain in the payment ecosystem is very relevant. With Request Network, real-time global accounting can be automated, thereby replacing an entire branch of audits and eliminating manual tax collections, further simplifying international payments and enabling machines to communicate on the same financial field.

Systems from different companies can connect to Request to create requests or access information. When a payment system connects to Request, it will be able to access invoices of the user and propose to pay them instantly. For example, shopping on Amazon requires payment by credit/debit card, thereby exposing sensitive information. If a user selects the option to pay via Request, the buyer’s data remain protected, because there is no sharing of information there. Amazon, on the other hand, will post a request on the network, buyer’s account will detect the request. Following that, the request will ask for a confirmation of payment from the buyer, and when that is done, the fund will be transferred from the buyer’s wallet to Amazon’s wallet.

The integration

Through this collaboration, Kyber Network will be added as a payment option for users and merchants on Request Network. Merchants that leverage on Request Network will be able to easily utilize Kyber Network and send or receive payment in a desired currency that differs from the sending or receiving currency, providing a seamless user experience for consumers.

Following the integration, Kyber Network will also be used for the burning of REQ tokens. By design, Request Network allows people to pay fees in Ether, and the contract automatically converts the Ether to a corresponding amount of REQ tokens before burning it. With Kyber Network, Request Network can receive a payment of request in Ether, and then designate a percentage of the payment as fee to be sent to Kyber contract for conversion into REQ token. After this, the REQ tokens will be forwarded to a destination address which burns everything it receives, thereby simplify and eliminating repetition in the burning process.

Bonus

Lastly, the Request Network team will be stationing themselves in Singapore in the next few months. We look forward to the team’s arrival, ready to greet them with Singaporean hospitality.