Flexa is an instant payment and anti-fraud network for digital assets. Using a Flexa-enabled wallet app, anyone can spend a variety of cryptocurrencies, ERC20 tokens, stable coins, and rewards points – instantly, privately, and for free – on multinational brands across the United States and Canada.
Paying with Flexa takes less than a second, in-store or online. And because Flexa is essentially made up of decentralized infrastructure, its network is faster, safer, and more secure than traditional payment methods like credit/debit cards and credit cards. gift. At the heart of the Flexa network is the Amp Collateral Token (AMP), which ensures all real-time Flexa payments and enables underlying digital asset transactions to finally confirm and resolved on-chain.
Using the Flexa Capacity smart contract, anyone can provide guaranteed AMP to Flexa-enabled wallets they deem trustworthy and useful – and in return, they earn network rewards below as a minimal processing fee that Flexa charges merchants.
Payment with Flexa is currently available on iOS and Android and will have dozens of digital wallets by the end of 2020. With support for more than two dozen different digital currencies, Flexa claims to be the simplest, easiest, and safest way to spend digital assets today.
How does the Flexa app work?
When it’s time to make a purchase, your app generates a unique barcode called a “flex code,” which participating retailers can scan to authorize and secure your transaction instantly. Flexa then pays the merchant in the currency or fiat currency of their choice. Meanwhile, Flexa’s Spend SDK will deduct the equivalent amount of cryptocurrency (e.g. bitcoin or ether) from your in-app digital wallet.
Flexa Instant Payment Authorization is done through Amp – the network’s native token – co-developed by Flexa and ConsenSys. As an ERC20-compliant token based on Ethereum, Amp acts as crowdfunding collateral to fully decentralize payment risk, rewarding those who provide collateral with multiple tokens with more Amp reports for each successful payment transaction.
On the Flexa crypto network and all staked Amp tokens can be locked in real-time to secure pending payment transactions. In this way, it can instantly secure payments in any currency and directly extend the benefits of distributed ledger technology (DLT) to merchants who interact with payments to consumers.
Characteristics of Flex code
First of all, Flexa transactions are specific. Unlike gift cards or merchandise credits, the flex code representing a stored value account provided by Flexa is used only once, maintaining system security and preventing fraud. This “encryption” approach is similar to the EMV chip and 3D Secure cryptography that are incorporated into modern credit and debit card transactions around the world.
Second, its transactions are temporary. Actual cryptocurrency exchange rates and spenders require no preload or pre-exchange. After that, the flex token and stored value account expire.
The transactions are secured, but not funded in the end, until a transaction occurs. Perhaps the main differences between Flexa’s integration with merchants and other closed-loop approaches, as well as the key similarities to credit and debit networks, and what makes them scalable to so.
When paying with flex tokens, Flexa-backed store-of-value accounts are secured by crypto-value rather than being funded in fiat currency and thus represent pre-authorization or correspondence use. As in credit and debit networks, merchants receive payment after each transaction. (and after the corresponding amount of cryptocurrency has been converted to fiat) via any preferred payment method.
Flexa: IRL Cryptocurrency Adoption
The Flexa model benefits both sides of the transaction. For merchants, the many benefits of it include lower costs, faster payments, elimination of fraud, and access to the growing cryptocurrency market while for crypto holders.
Flexa brings digital assets to the real world, further establishing the credentials of cryptocurrency as money and unlocking value in the form of straightforward tender for goods and services.
In the United States, about 86% of payments from retail take place offline at physical stores. The ratio of cryptocurrencies among these payment transactions is key to widespread adoption. Key implementations make Flexa the most promising approach for successfully integrating digital currency links with physical retailers.
First, it is an entirely merchant-focused payments platform. It incorporates familiar technologies such as backward-compatible barcodes, ISO 8583 messaging, and closed-loop payment rails while abstracting away the regulatory difficulties of cryptocurrency handling — effectively eliminating custom IT work and compliance obligations as a barrier to accepting cryptocurrency payments.
The wide range of plugins and integrations often eliminate many of the traditionally established intermediaries in payment transactions, significantly reducing acceptance costs while paying faster than ever before.
Second, Flexa addresses Payment fraud from a whole new angle. Payment card transactions could exceed $12 billion by 2021 due to lost or stolen cards, counterfeit cards, and losses in cardless transactions such as online purchases. Used to validate transactions along with a new approach to secure decentralized payments, traditional types of payment fraud are simply no longer viable.
Conclusion
The Flexa network currently enables crypto payments at tens of thousands of retail locations across the US. Next, they will introduce payments to other verticals and in other countries around the world.
The use cases that we are most interested in are facilitating foreign payments to take advantage of the borderless nature of cryptocurrencies. Because balances are always held in cryptocurrencies, because they are only exchanged for fiat through interaction with a physical point of sale, and because flex code authorization is secure but not funded at the time of payment, it can actually detect and direct merchant payments in the form of local fiat currencies anywhere in the world.
As Flexa scales, this means more individuals will be able to use their collective purchasing power in ways that were previously hampered by high exchange rates and unequal rates. Since it only allows payments from cryptocurrencies – essentially borderless – these fiat-to fiat forex taxes become completely unrelated to payments made by an individual in the country outside.
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