Hey everyone! If you've been keeping up with the weekly INLEO AMAs (every Tuesday at Noon EST), then you'll know that we've been teasing the official launch of LeoMerchants.
In this post, we'll talk about what LeoMerchants is, how it's been running successfully for 1 month and the new pilot program I've been working with a local Point of Sale company to deploy LeoMerchants IRL.
The First Use Case of LeoMerchants Has Been Running Successfully for 1 Month
The first use case of LeoMerchants has been live on https://inleo.io/premium for about a month now. It allows anyone to subscribe to INLEO Premium ($10/mo or $100/yr) using ANY crypto.
Prior to LeoMerchants going live, we only accepted HBD as the payment method to go Premium on INLEO.
Now, INLEO accepts ANY crypto (BTC, ETH, USDC, DASH, ARB, USDT, CACAO, RUNE, etc.) to purchase Premium.
But there's one huge caveat: we still settle Premium payments exclusively in HBD. You can see all the Premium payments happening in the @leopool account on Hive.
This is exciting because it is constant buying pressure for HIVE & HBD on chain. We use the LeoMerchants API to allow the customer to pay in whatever they want, but we still only receive HBD.
Example: Customer XYZ signs up to Premium and selects DASH as their payment method. They are prompted to pay $10 worth of DASH. The DASH is swapped for HBD using https://leodex.io and HBD is sent to the @leopool account on Hive.
The swap happens entirely on the backend, the user doesn't see any of this happen. All they see is that they paid $10 in DASH and now they have 1 month of INLEO Premium.
This is now live and has been working flawlessly for about a month on https://inleo.io/premium. We accept over a dozen cryptos already and many more are on the way as we integrate ChainFlip, Thorchain and Rango swaps to LeoDex in the coming week or so.
Over 300+ Crypto Payment Options With Settlement in HBD Are On the Way
As I said, we are currently adding Thorchain, ChainFlip and Rango swaps to https://leodex.io right now.
This means that you'll not only be able to swap with over 300+ cryptos (nearly any crypto in the industry once we have Maya (currently live) + Thorchain + ChainFlip + Rango aggregation), but you'll also be able to pay in any of those cryptos.
We're basically going to support every single coin out there. They'll get insta-swapped into HBD (or whatever the merchant chooses to receive).
A small fee is taken on every payment and also sent to the @leopool account. Maya, Thorchain, Rango and ChainFlip also pay affiliate fees to DEX UIs, so we also receive a small fee from their blockchains as well.
Visa, Mastercard and these other massive payment processing behemoths generate absurd piles of money every single year by processing transactions.
The vision for LeoMerchants: what if we can take even a tiny fraction of these payments and process them using our technology stack? This could bring millions of dollars in inflows to the Hive blockchain.
Pilot Program for LeoMerchants Officially Launches in 25 Stores
The LEO Team worked very hard on getting this tech stack built and it has been running flawlessly on INLEO to pay for premium for a month now.
While we've been building this, I've been working with a local Point of Sale provider in my area. They are crypto-curious and currently offer a lot of BTC ATMs in my area.
I spoke with them about the ability to integrate LeoMerchants into two areas of their business:
- Merchants who have PoS devices in their brick-and-mortar stores
- BTC ATMs that they have placed in various gas stations
I'm excited to finally announce that the Pilot program will be going live to their merchants who have PoS devices.
This will allow in-store customers to pay with over a dozen cryptos (soon, 300+ once our new aggregation providers go live).
For example: Customer XYZ walks into a gas station (the gas station has chosen to receive USDC in their Coinbase Wallet from the LeoMerchants API). The customer buys $50 worth of gas and a protein bar. They walk up to the counter and see a payment device. They click that they want to pay the $50 using LINK (ChainLink's Cryptocurrency).
The device pops up a QR code, they scan it with their LINK wallet and $50 worth of LINK gets sent to the LeoMerchants API. LeoMerchants then uses LeoDex to convert the $50 worth of LINK into USDC and sends it to the Gas Station's Coinbase account.
LeoDex collects a ~1.25% fee on this transaction. That is less than half the average Credit Card processing fee in my area (~3% is standard here).
NOTE: We collect our fee as HBD on the Hive blockchain, so our 1.25% fee is collected in LINK and then swapped to HBD into the @leopool wallet. This creates a constant inflow of capital to the Hive blockchain. If we process $1M per month in crypto processing for LeoMerchants, that is roughly $12,500 per month that is being autonomously swapped into HBD from exogenous crypto assets (LINK, BTC, ETH, etc.).
Adding HIVE/HBD and All Other Cryptos to BTC ATMs
We are still finalizing work on the BTC ATMs as their legal team explores the implications of adding "any crypto" to the ability to get BTC or USD from an ATM. I'm excited to see what we find out from this as it would allow you to go to a BTC ATM and actually get USD for your HIVE or vice versa.
Imagine being able to buy HIVE using USD (or your local currency) at a BTC ATM. It would work very simply:
- The BTC ATM asks you to deposit USD
- It dispenses BTC to your BTC wallet (instead, you give them a LeoDex address - this is all done from their software)
- LeoDex converts the BTC to HIVE and sends it to your Hive Wallet
Voila, you have just bought HIVE at an ATM. All in just a few minutes.
Rollout Strategy
The first store is set to go live with the PoS device VerySoon. I'll make sure to walk in and take a video of me paying with any random crypto and then have the merchant show their Coinbase wallet.
This merchant has already setup their Coinbase wallet to receive USDC (Arbitrium) in it from each in-store purchase. So for example, I will walk in and pay for a can of diet coke using DASH. I'll scan the QR code to pay with DASH, send ~$3 worth of DASH and then the merchant will instantly receive ~$3 (less fees) worth of USDC (Arbitrum) in his wallet.
I'll pull up the @leopool account as well to showcase how the 1.25% fee we collect on payment processing is swapped from DASH to HBD and deposited in @leopool. o
As I said, the BTC ATMs may take a bit more time as there's some red tape to work on when it comes to USD <> Crypto. Soon :)
Want to Test LeoMerchants for Yourself or Integrate it Into Your Business?
If you want to test LeoMerchants, you can go to https://inleo.io/premium and try buying Premium with any crypto right now. INLEO is the first live use case of LeoMerchants.
If you run a business on Hive or elsewhere (or have a good relationship with someone who does) and you guys want to integrate LeoMerchants so you can accept any crypto, please reach out to me/the LEO Team or drop a comment below. We want to get 1,000+ merchants integrated with LeoMerchants ASAP.
The future of payments is cross-chain.
The future of payments makes Hive the middle-layer.
The future of payments is LeoMerchants 🦁