Do you even Flexa?

Visa is one of the most recognizable brands in the world. Believe it or not, in 2009 you could buy stock in Visa for about $12 a share (today it’s over $200). Every Visa stakeholder owns a piece of the pie and receives their cut of the network proceeds, paid every 3 months. Mailbox money for life.

Well, what is Visa, and what makes it so valuable? It’s a payments network. Visa does not issue cards, extend credit, or set rates. It puts all the ducks in a row, so when you go to a store and put your bank card in the machine, it beeps “all good”. To do that, they pass your data through 6–12 intermediaries several times to verify various things. Unfortunately, that’s 6–12 points of failure, 6–12 points with hungry mouths to feed, and 6–12 places where fraud can happen. It was state of the art when it was invented in the 1950’s, but rigidly complex today.

Gotta be a better way, right?

Flexa thinks we can do it with cryptocurrency.

Flexa isn’t just another coin. Flexa is a payments network that allows anyone, acting as their own bank, to instantly beep “all good” at the store.

It sort of works like this:

• Users can go to mainstream stores like Dunkin’, Lowes, Ulta Beauty, or GameStop, and pay with any coin supported by Flexa — Zcash, BCH, Ether, etc. No permission needed. No asking if they accept crypto payments. No friction.
• To use, open your Flexa-enabled mobile app, and let the cashier scan the barcode like they would scan a giftcard. No one knows or cares what happens behind the scenes, but the machine beeps “all good” and everyone is happy.
• Stores don’t need any special hardware or software, nor do they need to train staff on how to use this. They just need a regular gift card scanner. Point and scan. Ta-da.
• Flexa pays the merchant instantly, and debits from your coin of choice. Since they need an immediate guarantee that your coin payment is good, it gets collateralized by an army of stakeholders who “stake” Flexacoin (edit: AMP) on it.
• Merchants pay processing fees to Flexa, just like what they’d pay to Visa, Paypal, or Google Pay, only the fees are significantly less due to the series of middlemen being removed. Those payments get distributed to the FXC coinholders who stake at app.flexa.network and essentially own a piece of the pie and receive their cut of the network proceeds, paid every 15 minutes!

How can you use Flexa to Pay With Zcash, today?

Gemini, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, supports Flexa payments! Right now, you can download the Gemini mobile app, available to iOS and Android. Once you fund your Gemini wallet with some ZEC, head out to any Flexa enabled store, like Dunkin, Lowes, Ulta Beauty, or GameStop, and open your app and look for the ‘pay’ tab at the bottom. Ask the cashier to scan the barcode that appears, and voila, the cash register should beep “all good” and print out a receipt.

Take all this a step further, and it’s not hard to imagine a non-custodial Zcash wallet using Flexa that enables instantly paying with *shielded* ZEC at mainstream retailers! That’s the dream, and it’s not far away.