Moving money around has been a concern to many ever since you and I can remember. In the early days when cash was tied to an actual physical asset (gold) people mostly moved it around physically. In order to close a transaction one had to carry money to the recipient and close the deal. This was a risky business and a prime time for bandits. Well don't get me wrong I don't mean to say that bandits exist because of cash, all am saying is that moving cash around and especially large amounts of it is a risky business. That is why of the solutions that occurred were secure carriages, trains…etc. Fast forward banks started to exist.
Banks became a better solution to storing and moving money around even though there were incidents of theft and robbery but generally speaking they are a safer option to moving and storing money around. The issue with banks is that you needed to have a bank account and you needed to wait for ages to have your money moved around. Even today moving money around through banks and across countries is not as fast, as it can take days. This is where Remittance companies came to play. They usually transfer your money faster than banks and across different countries. They are highly compliant because they mandate a proper screening to combat any possibility of Money Laundry. In the simplest terms, they take in cash and give it to the other end.
Remittance companies depend on agents that interact with the customers. You can think of agents as the interacting layer between normal customers and the remittance company. For example, Bob wants to send Money to Alice. Bob resides say in Canada and Alice in the US. They head to Say XTransfer company, that company uses XYZRemittance for the transfers. So Bob hands in the cash to XTransfer. XTransfer through XYZRemittance sends the transaction. The settlements between XTransfer, XYZRemittance, and Alice happen behind the scenes and on Alice's end, there is another agent say YTransfer that also uses XYZRemittance. YTransfer then hands the money to Alice. This process generally takes few hours to complete and usually considered a peer-peer payment; meaning it is one to one. This is the basic overview; there are other details to the process like settling records in both ends and actually transferring the money through banks….etc but let us keep things simple.
VTNGLobal wants to introduce a feature that allows users to easily and quickly move money around, quicker than the traditional Remittance companies. First, let us talk about VTNGlobal and their background. So they are a US based company under the name VTNGlobal Inc. They have been operating in Nigeria as well for 12 years under the name VTNetwork Limited.
Based on the numbers they have published they have more than 5800 merchants on board with 3.6 million users. The transaction volume their platform users' have processed is more than 700 mil during the year 2016–2018. Their company in Nigeria is licensed for international transfers and mobile payments.
Given their background and expertise in moving money around they decided to adopt for Crypto to make life simpler and safer by moving money around. What they are introducing is what I like to call the crypto digital money orders but with a plus. Let us go back to our scenario of Bob and Alice. Now, in this case, using VTNGlobal. So XTransfer now uses VTNGlobal. Bob heads to XTransfer, pays the agent and gets a scratchcard in form of tokens that have a set value. Now as Bob holds that scratchcard has the freedom to send to Alice or Alice and others. The value resides in what is called "digital good funds".
As it is known agents usually don't just operate one single remittance company. They can actually represent multiple. It wouldn't make sense for the remittance company to open offices everywhere; they just partner up with agents and the agents use them. Now the million dollar question. since an agent can represent multiple remittance companies, which would the agent use to transfer and move money around? Well simple first of all the agent (XTransfer) has the freedom to choose whichever remittance company they deal with (XYZRemittance or VTNNetwork or even VTNGLobal) and sometimes the client has the option to choose (aka Bob); however the agents like XTransfer or YTransfer usually opt for the remittance that yields the most returns for them. Which in most if not all cases that is decided by the commission rate provided by the remittance company.
VTNGlobal for their solution introduced what is called the RemittanceToken. RemittanceToken does not require much effort by the agent, unlike the traditional cash where the client needs to fill in papers and have his ID scanned and the agent verifies and fills several details in the system and authorize the transaction. With RemittanceToken The agent will simply give out the card and takes the amount in cash (assuming the client is KYCd). The agent is rewarded by the number of cards sold. Let us go back to our previous example of Bob and Alice but now with RemittanceToken. As Bob hands the cash to the agent and the agent hands the card to Bob. The agent is rewarded by activating the card sold to Bob. When the Agent activates the card a commission is automatically transferred to the agent's account. Note that the activation here means that the agent transferred the requested tokens to Bob.
The obvious benefits from this approach are that the solution given it is in Tokens is highly secured and portable, the client (Bob) can freely move his funds around. Also, Bob has the freedom to distribute not to one recipient but to many. Above all, it is actually cheaper. For one the agent's effort is reduced to around 90%.
The other big question is what do you gain from this aside from having a portable solution that can be transferred to many recipients and is actually cheaper? Well, the benefits extend to real-time settlements. With this approach, you are basically completing a transfer in almost a real-time fashion. Try transferring money through a bank account or a traditional remittance company; in the best case scenario you are likely to wait a few hours; with banks, you need to wait days if it is cross-border. Imagine having a real-time settlement? especially in purchasing and selling goods.
VTNGlobal is currently doing an ICO and the solution is placed under the entity REMCO Software, Inc. and is in the process of raising funds. They have a total number of 2,000,000,000 Remittance Tokens. 65% of which will be sold. 15% will be allocated for the team and advisors which is subject to vesting for a period of 1year-2years. 10% will be held as a reserve that will be used for expansion and licensing.
The low cap is set to $6 million and the hard cap is set to $60 million. Remco's price is set between $0.04 and $0.08 during the private and public sales. Before I end this post I will be added some resources down below for you to know more about them and as always this is not an investment advise it is mere personal view and XTranser, YTransfer and XYZRemittance are mere fictional examples for demonstration purposes.
Resources:
Website — www.remittancetoken.io
Facebook — www.facebook.com/remittancetoken/
Twitter — www.twitter.com/RemittanceToken
Telegram ANN — www.t.me/RemcoNews
Telegram Bounty Chat — www.t.me/remcobounty
Bitcoin Talk ANN — www.bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4983198
Bitcoin Talk Bounty — www.bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4989188
Medium - www.medium.com/@peterojo
Slack - www.remittancetoken.slack.com