COTI made the announcement, at the end of 2021, that they’ll be working with a global card network and with Simplex, their close partner, as the card issuer. However, not only will they be issuing a COTI debit card, they will also be introducing COTI bank accounts that will be accessible directly via the COTI Pay app! Read their exciting announcement below.
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A debit card has always been an important component of COTI’s all-encompassing financial ecosystem. Having a debit card that allows users to spend their crypto wherever cards are accepted serves an important continuation of our user’s experience and also as a means to exponentially grow our merchant network.
A physical and virtual debit card significantly increases the adoption of the COTI network, as merchants who are unable to accept crypto as a method of payment can now accept it as a de facto payment option, via the COTI debit card.
We are thrilled to announce that we’ll be working with a global card network and with Simplex, our close partner, as the card issuer. However, not only will we be issuing a COTI debit card, we will also be introducing COTI bank accounts that will be accessible directly via the COTI Pay app!
By using this service, COTI users will be able to store fiat natively in their COTI Pay wallet and spend their fiat balance at any merchant that accepts major cards, both online or in-store.
Via a COTI bank account, users will receive a personal IBAN that will enable the user to transfer funds to and from any bank account in the world. A user can not only send and receive fiat as they would with any other traditional bank account but will also be able to store fiat via the COTI Pay app, along with converting crypto to fiat and fiat to crypto, again, directly from the COTI Pay app. This service includes many features that are unavailable on other networks, no maximum purchase limits, 1-click buy and sell at various partners, 1-time KYC, and a variety of top-up or payment transfer methods.
COTI bank accounts will launch first and will be shortly followed by COTI debit cards. The debit card will be issued globally, beginning with Europe, then the US, and eventually Asia, Oceania, and other regions. Users will receive both a physical debit card and a virtual debit card within the COTI Pay app. Bank accounts will launch anywhere outside of the US immediately.
The COTI debit card operates on a fiat only balance, which means that any fiat stored in the users COTI bank account is automatically accessible via the COTI debit card. Users will also be able to top up the COTI debit card directly, by simply clicking on the “Top Up” button beneath the virtual card in the COTI Pay app and selecting their top up currency, BTC, ETH, USDT, or COTI. The fair balance of the selected cryptocurrency will be seamlessly settled and applied to both the users COTI bank account and COTI debit card. Users will also have the option of buying or selling cryptocurrency within the COTI Pay app and settling this directly to and from their COTI bank account.
All of this has become possible via our partnership with Simplex, the world’s biggest provider of fiat-to-crypto services, used by Binance, Huobi, and many other leading exchanges. We have previously worked with Simplex to allow the direct purchase of COTI with credit cards on various exchanges and platforms and we are humbled to be one of the first companies selected by Simplex to issue their integrated card and banking service.
Lets look back to a March 25, 2021 Interview with Simplex CEO, Nimrod Lehavi for more insights (Video)
Nimrod Lehavi, Simplex’s CEO: “Simplex is driven by the underlying mission of accelerating crypto adoption, and a large element of mass adoption is enabling the accessibility of crypto earnings. We’re excited to partner with COTI to enable their thousands of users to make use of their funds throughout the world”.
You can now apply for a COTI debit card and COTI bank account via your COTI Pay app:
As we expect high demand for these new services, we have created a waiting list that accounts for all regions, so make sure you apply early, as where possible, applications will be processed on a first come, first serve basis.
The first COTI debit cards and COTI bank accounts should be issued in January 2022.
Via this site to get more details on above artilcle
Here is more information on COTI payment ecosystem added for the added insights. Note that this article is from February 2020, therefore some of the details may have changed. It is written by COTI on Medium.com
Credit Card Processing on the COTI Network is Live!
Today we’re happy to announce that we’ve recently processed our first credit card transaction on the COTI network. This is the culmination of over a year’s behind the scenes work to build out the technical infrastructure, banking networks, licenses and expansion of our payment network to support this functionality, marking a seminal moment in COTI’s progression towards becoming a truly universal payment solution.
As a payment network, COTI already has several distinct competitive advantages compared to traditional payment networks: Instant settlement via digital rails vs slow settlement through traditional rails, no foreign exchange conversion costs vs high fees on both the merchant and the consumer, access to DeFi based lending and savings, inclusion of the unbanked and a fully white-labeled mode of operation.
By adding in support for credit card processing we’re now able to apply these advantages to a much wider range of merchants than we’ve previously been able to target. Our strategy for payments from the start has not been to replace an industry, as so many crypto projects try (and fail) to do, but instead to bridge the gap between the old and new, and credit card processing in the next big leap for COTI in doing so. Credit card processing also acts as a customer acquisition and growth hack strategy for other elements of the business. This allows us to quickly and easily onboard businesses with a product they are used to using, while being able to expose them and “upsell” them to the other many features of the COTI network.
There are several advantages for merchants to process credit cards on the COTI network as opposed to traditional networks like PayPal, Square or even bitpay. Firstly, COTI offers significantly lower fees for processed transactions on credit cards which obviously makes it cheaper for merchants, with the difference in fees being anywhere between 2–8% per transaction on other networks and 1–2% per transaction on COTI. For merchants processing significant volume, these savings can amount to hundreds of thousands a year.
Secondly, many merchants can’t access traditional payment networks as they are deemed to be “high risk” and those that can, carry the burden of significantly increased fees and charges due to their high risk status. “High risk” merchants are those who operate in industries with high instances of chargebacks (over 1% of all transactions in high risk industries result in a chargeback), with a few examples of these being, anything related to cryptocurrency, subscription or recurring payments, software as a service, drugs or pharmaceuticals, electronics, furniture, financial services, gaming or gambling and travel and ticketing agencies, to name a few. A chargeback is a reversal of an already credited payment, usually a disputed or fraudulent transaction. This is not only an issue for the payment processor, but for the issuer bank, the acquirer bank, the credit card network and also for the merchant, as too many chargebacks lead to higher fees or to exclusion from the network. Even worse, a merchant can be categorized as high risk, even if they aren’t, just because they belong to a certain industry or because their consumers come from a certain country.
For high risk merchants who have the ability to access traditional payment networks, fees on these networks can be anywhere from the range of 5% to 15%, not accounting for any chargeback fees (that can be up to $250 per chargeback). This is a significant cost to merchants operating in these industries and one COTI can greatly, if not totally, reduce.
This places COTI in a unique position in which we can capitalise on merchants in all industries and offer significant cost savings, without increasing overhead or processes. High risk merchants who operate in lucrative industries and process massive volumes of transactions at an extremely high cost can move to COTI and be treated like a “normal” merchant, as on COTI we assess merchants by their individual Trustscore and not by the industry they are part of.
Money saved as a result of using the COTI network is all money that merchants can use to buy more products or stock, hire more employees, to advertise and grow their business…or simply add to their take home profit. This makes our pitch to businesses a simple and compelling one. Some might even describe it as a “no brainer”.
Of course, the additional benefit of adding credit card processing to the COTI network and the additional transactions that come with it is that our network actually gets faster! As COTI is based on DAG architecture (the Trustchain is a bespoke DAG) and not limited to a fixed amount of TPS per second, and with transaction confirmation time being based off the numbers of previously confirmed transactions on the DAG, this means more transactions equal faster confirmations, greatly increasing the TPS on the network as a whole.
As we have been building out and bootstrapping the network, along with completing the rollout of our merchant payment tools, we have already been processing over $5m USD per month in transactions for merchants. With credit cards now added into the mix and we the increased reach and ease of implementation we have over merchants in, but of course, not limited to, the industries mentioned above, who cannot access a low cost credit card processing payment network like COTI, we expect this volume to now significantly grow, with a projection of $15m USD, per month, in processed transactions over the next quarter, with this only set to grow in the very near future as we aggressively onboard new merchants for credit card processing.
As we recently announced, the added revenue from credit card processing will be used by merchants to grow demand for COTI’s native coin, as like any transaction on the COTI network, COTI coin is used as the fee mechanism. COTI will also purchase coins required for merchant fees from the open market on a periodic basis.
