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Wagmi Journal ~6 min read preserved as written not financial advice

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FinTech Wallet App

CEX/FinTechL1/L2 Wallet

Features:

  • Free in-work ATM withdrawals

  • 10 free overseas transfer per month

  • Fiat payment system similar to venmo and paypal

  • Exchange rate based on FoRex market data feed from independent (undisclosed) sources

  • Built-in budgeting management

  • Link to Google Pay/Apple Pay

  • Savings Vault and Vaults (FDIC insured)

Cryptocurrency:

  • As an investment

  • Supported tokens: BTC, BCH, ETH, AAVE, MATIC, LINK, LTC

  • Acting as a CEX with swap feature (market orders)

  • Can’t withdraw crypto to self-custodial wallet (ledger, metamask, phantom, etc)

  • Despite the website saying you own your crypto, it locks the crypto in the ecosystem

  • The revolut card can’t pay using crypto

Source of Revenue:

  • Premium and Metal accounts (subscription based)

  • Commission from merchants (small fees when using Revolut card)

  • Withdraw to bank account fee

Additional opinions:

  • Tokens would not be that great of benefit here seeing that they have implemented a subscription based model that generates revenue

  • Though, the subscription model could be paid through crypto tokens

Republic

Features:

  • $700+M invested, 1.5M+ users, 600+ funding rounds. Somewhat an crowd-funding/investing app for startups, video games, real estate, and crypto

  • Platform to aggregate venture capitalists to invest in startups – AngelList, Product Hunt, Binance Labs

  • Features Investors: Randi Zuckerberg, Chamillionaire, Kevin Harrington, Tim Draper, Jon Najarian, and Wendell Carter

  • 64 startups live deal and 376 funded – 3 on blockchain sector (Hydro Hash, Unbanked, SoMee) and 20 funded companies

Cryptocurrency:

  • Leaning towards to crowdfunding startups: PROPS, Witnet, Althea, Cere, GARI, BitGreen, Coinvest, Linen, Ratio Finance, and ParaState

  • Not exactly a wallet to store crypto themselves

  • Most of the crypto projects opt-in for Token DPA (Debt Payable by Assets)

  1. Debt security created by Republic specifically for project’s token pre-sales

  2. Each token DPA is different by projects

  3. Generally, the token DPA is designed to issue debt and collect necessary capital to build projects’ proof-of-concept

  4. The token DPA sets a time limit for the duration a project can hold the funds before paying interest – similar to Amartha (P2P lending based in Indonesia)

  5. The agreement is considered as a debt instrument if the project is based on a Delaware entity according to the FASB.

  • Currently, there is no method in withdrawing the token DPA return in the form of crypto through the platform itself

Source of Revenue:

  • There is no posts/sites that elaborate on the details for source of revenue

  • Under the assumption that Republic takes in the general source of revenue of similar crowdfunding apps, they generate revenue through fees.

  • Transaction fees for both the client (companies) and investors

  • Another method is through taking a charge of 2-10% from the funds raised in their platform

Additional Opinion:

  • Republic is not so trustworthy according to bussinessinsider.com. Better Business Bureau has given Republic D- rating (scale from A+ to F) given its failure to respond to one complaint filed against the business.

  • A token introduced in the ecosystem would definitely be beneficial to the Republic, since they are aiming for unconventional private businesses. The token would indicate that the crypto industry has widen its arm into the private sector and open up countless possibilities.

AstroPay

Note: There is not much information here since signing up requires a non-US phone number. All information is based on the company’s landing page and other news/blog posts.

Features:

  • Wallet/payment app similar to PayPal

  • Instant transactions and supports multi-currency

  • Able to deposit and withdraw to local currency or in USD

  • Not available directly in the US

Crypto:

  • In Feb 1, 2022, AstroPay opens its gates in the crypto industry

  • In the founder’s comments, he stated that the company has been working with cryptocurrencies for two years. This could be assumed that before the news, the company has been a custodial wallet for crypto assets without a swapping/trading mechanism.

  • Supported tokens: BTC, BCH, LTC, and ADA

Additional opinions:

  • A user in reddit claims that a BTC transaction was fictitious given that he had tried contacting several customer service, which replied merely through copy-paste messages.

  • AstroPay received a 2.3 rating out of 5 in TrustPilot

Skrill

Features:

  • Virtual wallet with a prepaid Visa card similar to other crypto cards

  • Able to transfer money internationally

  • For US resident, Skrill allows betting through the app, working with fubo sportsbook and betway

  • Depositing funds require no additional fees except through Paysafe

  • More information on fees here.

Crypto:

  • Fees for crypto depends on the value of transactions

  • Supported tokens: BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH

  • Can’t send crypto directly out to self-custodial wallet

  • To cash out crypto, the user needs to initially sell it for fiat and transfer to bank account

  • Based on their TnC, bought crypto assets are only used to top up Skrill card balance or investing

Additional Opinions:

  • TrustPilot rates it 3.9 out of 5 with over 19,000 reviews: 70% rates excellent (5) and 20% rates bad (1).

  • A token would not be that great benefit to the platform since most of their historical transactions are in the form of fiat. Furthermore, they have an elaborate fee structure that would definitely generate enough revenue without the need to go decentralized.

Wirex

Features:

  • A payment solution mostly revolving around blockchain

  • Blockchain-powered crypto transactions

  • Has a debit card able to spend USD and cryptocurrencies with real-time conversion rate and zero exchange fees

Crypto:

  • Crypto cash back rewards up to 8% on debit card spending

  • Instant exchange rate conversion from crypto to fiat/USD

  • Plethora of supported cryptocurrencies: AAVE, BAT, BCH, BTC, BUSD, CVC, COMP, DAI, DOGE, EGLD, ENJ, EOS, ETH, LINK, ZUSD, GYEN, GRT, KNC, LTC, MKR, OXT, OMG, DOT, PAXG, SOL, SAND, SHIB, STORJ, TUSD, UNI, USDC, USDP, USDT, WBTC, XLM, ZRX, USD, MATIC, XTZ

  • Crypto wallet able to hold DeFi and NFT assets cross-chain

  • Earn high-yield DeFi through the wallet

  • Swap cross-chain

  • Self-custodial wallet

  • Whitepaper here

Additional Opinion:

  • This is a great pick for a crypto-fiat wallet!

  • The company leans more towards crypto instead of conventional banking

  • The Wirex card can be compared apple-to-apple with Crypto.com Debit Card

  • Wirex currently has a token $WXT being a utility token designed to benefit growing B2C and B2B customers to save fees

  • There are no suspicious fees in the company structure itself (here)