Paywithsteem : Building the Blocks of E-Commerce With a Purpose
When @btcvenom and @zord189 approached me with the concept that they have been incubating, I was completely bowled over by the idea. A community store that incorporates the commercial agenda of generating profit whilst serving a communal agenda. The entire concept was simply too attractive for me to say no. I was approached for a very specific purpose to look into the legal and regulatory framework that the store operates. This hurdle is further amplified by the fact that steemit is not solely confined to a specific jurisdiction and definitely not as easy as merely adopting a shopify script.
Not Just Another Online Store
Our team’s major concern apart from the profitability and the communal responsibility to Steemit’s Ecosystem is the legal and regulatory framework. This framework differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Many observers will give this justification, if it has been accepted by shopify, it is legal. An overly simplified justification is if others are doing it and it is runny smoothly without any legal impediments, it is legal. This reasoning is akin to saying, if you break the red light and not caught doing it, it is legal. There is a world of difference. What most entrepreneur did not take into account is the caution by the service provider, which I quote:
Clause 5(3) of the Legal Terms
Your use of the Service is at your sole risk. The Service is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis without any warranty or condition, express, implied or statutory.
In short, we bear all risks if there are the following breaches:-
i) Licensing and branding rights;
ii) Privacy breaches; and
iii) Failure of merchant to address consumer complains (consumer rights).
Our Vision
It is not our dream to have a halfbaked idea and run this shop like how some guy with half the idea of what he is doing would run it. We want this store to be sustainable, hence the team of people with the right niche is chosen. I am the last person to approach if it is a marketing initiative or a branding exercise. There are legitimate legal concerns to address.
License to Sell
Our first concern is the license to sell certain products. Usually it is always the more sought after products that would have its own chain of distribution. They would have established their master distributor, their regional distributor and their appointed agents. Hence, attempts to sell the same product commercially would be considered as ‘unlicensed’ sale. Unless of course, the person selling it is not doing it for a commercial reason. For example someone who bought a licensed Microsoft Office and realised that he owns an apple product and wanted to dispose it to cut loss. He is not classified as selling for a commercial reason.
source
Our team has expended considerable amount of time to scout for products which has quality assurance and these products generally requires a reseller’s license. The definition of a reseller is a person who buys to sell for profit. We would fall within that category. We are in talks with certain gaming companies and our successful procurement of reseller’s license can be seen below:-
We definitely would be embarrassed if our sale is brisk and we are injuncted from proceeding with the sale merely because we did not have the right to sell.
Protection of Personal Data (Privacy Breach)
Shopify is a cloud e-commerce setup. Under the law pertaining to protection of personal data there are obligations imposed upon us as the vendor. First, the data must be collected and use only for the specific purpose that has been communicated. Here the data would be the address of delivery, the name of the purchaser and the name of the recipient. These are personal data and it is valuable commodity. This data would be made available to us and although we rely on the script provided by shopify we must have a proper system that safeguard these data or otherwise we would be in breach of this regulation.
I quote a passage from Epic.org
When users place their data and applications on centralized servers, they lose the ability to maintain complete control of that information. With the rise of cloud computing, critical and sometimes sensitive information that was once safely stored on personal computers now resides on the servers of online companies. Examples of such information including users email, banking information, and full backups of individuals' hard drives. This phenomenon creates a multitude of risks for the users.
Remember how in the past, you would be getting calls from unknown marketer that has tracked your spending habits and even managed to procure your personal handphone number. These practices are a thing of the past because of this regulation. The entire process is made harder because of the fact that it is a cloud e-commerce setup which means we do not maintain a server and these information are not in our exclusive control. This is one area that we have looked into and there was proper compliance.
Avenue of Consumer Reliefs (Consumer Protection)
It is the hallmark of any legitimate setup that consumers are prioritised. It is also our idea that your complains must be properly and legitimately handled. We have our policy that is accessible at Paywithsteem and generally we maintain accountability and transparency in our dealings with any purchasers.
Although there are provisions that allows for purchase ‘as is where is basis’ which would absolve us from liability but it is not an identity that we would like to be associated with. We know how much you toiled for your Steem or your SBD by writing posts that requires hours of research or play the Didgeridoo and we want to return you value and accountability. Hence you have our assurance that each and everyone one of us wants to sleep well knowing that we dealt with an honest trade and we have a satisfied consumer.
Our Values
You have our assurance that in running this community store, we are handling it the best way we can. There are many calls for us to expand our reach which we are doing, but different reach has different exposure and difficult fundamental concerns that our team would have to address and resolve because we are not your regular e-store. We are your neighbours in this community and we thrive when the ecosystem thrives.
I hope that this helps any up and coming entrepreneur to realise the huge gap between being accountable and being profitable. We are finding the equilibrium to do both.
Now with more of this issues ironed out, we are proud to roll out the platform in stages to serve you better. Make us your community Store. Hopefully we will one day be your community Mall. We wish you a White Christmas and may you and your family be blessed with bountiful or joy and laughter.
The Team at Paywithsteem wishes you Happy Holidays
Your friendly Community Store.