Frictionless payment of crypto in the real world
Donut?
You wanna pay people in Donuts??
Yes, and no.
At ////Etch we are building an employee bonus platform that we see as a small step, but critical for companies to experiment with paying staff in crypto without jumping straight to payroll. If we can show them in the real world how this works, then paying the staff in real-time is the next logical steps. (but 1000x easier to explain to the FD/board at that stage)
Our platform will allow employers to assign bonuses to individual, team or company-wide. All through smart contracts, and available on the blockchain for the employees to see.
Employers can choose from a basket of tokens — Ether, ////Pier or even ////🍩 or ////☕ tokens.
Oh, oh… back to that Donut.
We think that non-monetary incentives like coffee or food could be a lot of fun. Who would say no to a freebie, right?
So in that spirit, we plan to have two tokens, one for coffee, and one for a donut that will be fully redeemable, you’ve guessed it, for a coffee or a donut.
But to sell this idea to a busy coffee shop environment, we need to solve the most difficult nut to crack in crypto — frictionless payment of crypto.
So this was the challenge I set to our team and community... you can still join in on our telegram channel
"Who can come up with the most frictionless way for a coffee shop to take 1x ////☕ token as payment for 1x coffee from a customer who was rewarded with that token from his employer?
The customer could have the ////☕ token in a wallet on his phone, printed QR code, paper wallet or something else.
Imagine the coffee shop to be as busy as Pret a Merger at 8:45 on a Monday morning in central London where the staff don’t have enough time to deal with cash yet alone to open a crypto wallet…
Deadline 7PM BST today.
////Pier swag for the best idea, ////Etch tokens if outstanding :-)
(and yes open to staff, family and me)
Go…."
BTW — I’m starting with that idea of a QR code that Sarah shared here yesterday.
But there must be a better way, right?
And this is just not hypothetical, we have a chain of coffee shops who are interested in exploring this. But it MUST be frictionless :-)
We broke it down to five key steps:
- Place Order: “Hi, I see on the sticker on the door you accept ////Pier tokens…. I have a ////☕ token… Can I have a flat white please?”
- Acceptance of order: “Sure…”
- Hand over ////☕
- Validate ////☕
- Drink coffee
A number of ideas were put forward, from a WeChat type of a payment to RFID tags in a coffee bean keyring or a printed QR code on a reusable coffee cup.
The balance is always between convenience and security. So the question is, do we need to worry about the double spending of a coffee token? I think not. Therefore, I think we can design a system that uses RFID to store a private key for one token (and only one!!) and use a Bluetooth receiver mounted in a nice box that will light up when the customer taps their [insert anything here that we can stick the sticker too].
Time I think to have a pint with Techno, my Wifi/Bluetooth walking encyclopedia friend, and Billy that has a CNC cutting machine in his living room!
Euros Evans
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