Analysis of Flexa (AMP): A Pure Digital Payment Network
As a merchant-centric application, Flexa features point of sale (POS) hardware compatibility designed to reduce costs, settlement times, and fraud.Author: Tyler Spalding, Flexa CEO
Source: cryptopedia
Compiled by: Hu Tao, Chain Catcher
Flexa is a multifunctional digital payment platform that offers several key features. As a merchant-centric application, Flexa is compatible with point-of-sale (POS) hardware, designed to reduce costs, settlement times, and fraud. Payments are collateralized by Flexa's ERC-20 token Amp, which can earn additional Amp as collateral incentives. Flexa uses "flexcodes," unique barcodes generated and scanned for each transaction—enhancing security and consumer privacy. Flexa is widely accepted in North America and aims to expand globally, integrating with numerous applications and payment options.
Flexa: Digital Payments
Flexa is a fintech company based in New York City, building the future of payments by solving friction and high payment costs for merchants and consumers. For merchants, Flexa offers various payment integrations and plugins to accept digital assets using existing point-of-sale (POS) hardware and software. Flexa provides an embedded software development kit (SDK) for app developers to seamlessly unlock value from everything from digital wallets to loyalty applications. For consumers, Flexa supports dozens of digital currencies (including cryptocurrencies, tokens, and digital dollars) at thousands of stores in the U.S. and Canada (including Nordstrom, GameStop, Lowe's, and Petco). Flexa's mission is to ultimately enable digital asset payments for any store around the world, using any currency through any application.
How the Flexa App Works
When a purchase is needed, your app generates a unique barcode called a "flexcode," which participating retailers can scan to instantly authorize and guarantee your transaction. Flexa then pays the merchant in convertible virtual currency or their chosen fiat currency. Meanwhile, Flexa's Spend SDK deducts an equivalent amount of cryptocurrency from the digital wallet within the app.
Flexa's instant payment authorization is achieved through Amp (the network's native token), which is co-developed by Flexa and ConsenSys. As a fixed-supply, Ethereum-based ERC-20 compatible token, Amp serves as a crowdsourced collateral to fully decentralize payment risk, providing more Amp token rewards to those who provide collateral for each successful payment transaction. Anyone can stake Amp to applications on the Flexa crypto network and can lock any staked Amp tokens in real-time to ensure the security of payment transactions while waiting for confirmation. In this way, Flexa can instantly guarantee payments in any currency and directly extend the benefits of distributed ledger technology (DLT) to merchant-consumer payment interactions.
Flexa: Crypto Adoption IRL
The Flexa model benefits both parties in a transaction. For cryptocurrency holders, Flexa brings digital assets into the real world, further establishing cryptocurrencies as a medium of exchange and releasing value in the form of direct bids for goods and services. For merchants, Flexa's numerous advantages include reduced costs, faster settlement speeds, elimination of fraud, and access to the growing crypto market.
In the U.S., approximately 86% of retail payments occur in physical stores offline. Capturing a significant market share of cryptocurrency in these payment transactions has been key to mainstream adoption. However, most attempts to support retail digital payments have created challenging user experiences while overlooking the countless demands of merchants. As the public increasingly accepts digital assets as currency, several key implementations have made Flexa the most promising method for successfully integrating digital currencies with physical retailers.
First, Flexa is a fully merchant-centric payment platform. Flexa combines familiar technologies, such as backward-compatible barcodes, ISO 8583 messaging, and closed-loop payment rails, while eliminating regulatory hurdles associated with cryptocurrency processing—effectively removing custom IT work and compliance obligations as barriers to adopting crypto payments. Flexa's various plugins and integrations often eliminate several traditionally entrenched intermediaries in payment transactions, significantly reducing acceptance costs while enabling payments faster than ever before.
Second, Flexa approaches payment fraud from a fresh perspective. By 2021, global fraud losses from payment card transactions due to lost or stolen cards, counterfeiting, and card-not-present transactions (such as online shopping) could exceed $12 billion. Flexa's proprietary flexcodes are unique to each purchase, enhancing security while maintaining complete user privacy. With a distributed network used to verify transactions and new methods of decentralized payment collateral, traditional types of payment fraud are no longer possible.
Flexa has achieved significant growth over the past few years and has become a leading digital payment platform. Flexa's bridge from digital assets to fiat currency is considered by many in the blockchain industry to be key to the true use and success of the technology. On the Flexa crypto network, payments are fast, secure, and cost-effective, ultimately providing merchants with a meaningful, usable, and valuable alternative to traditional payment networks. We may have once dreamed of using cryptocurrency to buy ice cream cones or the latest Grand Theft Auto, and Flexa is making that vision a reality—opening up a whole new practical world for the asset class.
