Pundi X expands real world crypto payments with XPOS terminals

0:01I'm Ashen Addison from the Crypto Coin Show and today on blockchain interviews we have PCO Juan co-ceo of pundy X Labs PCO welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time thank you Austin for having me I'm so glad that I catch up with you again and it was a very long time ago that you have interview Zach and David and then me now and we are here surviving

0:29yeah it's amazing to see py continuing to grow excited to dive into crypto payments actual real world adoption and paying with crypto not just trading it around on the exchange putting it to use in the real world and I remember first seeing pundy X in 2017 and trying to get involved in the project because I saw this is one of the ways that we can get crypto into the

0:53hands of people that you know they're not Traders they're not Financial people but they realize hey if I can pay for a coffee or something and it saves all the fees and it's faster and cheaper then this is the solution and I know that is one of the initiatives that your team's been working on so it's great to see that you're still around I and I

1:12know that you're actually doing M there's your hand is in multiple fires so there's a lot of things going on I would love for you if you can explain you know sort of the new version the updated 2024 version on what how exactly you would explain pundy X to somebody who isn't familiar with all of the things that your team's been working on right I think you have asked a very

1:34important very good question is what Have We Become because it's like six years after so it has been changed a lot so fundi has started out at building upon ethereum Network and also we support the actually it's a close close loop system at that time because we want to have Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency work as fast as possible transacting for each other

2:05for as as fast as possible so we build a kind of like centralized closeth through system but nowadays the blockchain technology has been changed and the there are different network and it perform really really good the speed is really fast and it's centralized so on pund Expos the differences is that we actually provide the blockchain transactions for the users that they

2:34can pay with their own private wallet and also they can buy crypto with their private wallets so it's not Clos loop it's not centralized anymore we are moving towards web three so the customer actually own their crypto in their private wallet when they transacting with Expos and at the same time we maintain what we have before with the merchants because the merchants still

2:59have the needs to mitigate their risk from the cryptocurrency price volatility so we set those in stable coins for them so in the back end every Merchants will register their account with KX and also they can perform the accepting crypto with a Bitcoin on menet on Lightning Network and also accepting ethereum B&B usdt

3:30and PEX pexg which is the go back tokens so there are a lot of use cases going on This Moment especially in the world war assets yeah and when I look at going to the store and I want to pay for something with crypto you know I think a lot of people they have a hard time relating it to the traditional way of like hey you just have your credit card

3:56you just tap on the machine takes one second and somehow all them magic money gets moved into their terminal but when you think about Bitcoin it's like okay I have my phone and I have to copy the QR code to your phone and then you know you don't really need a terminal but in this case you have the xos which is a terminal but it has crypto in it so

4:15could you explain you know I feel like it's way easier and I think people don't understand that it's almost the same as the way that you used that you would be paying with credit cards but could you sort of explain the situation on you say you go to a coffee shop and they have the puny terminal how does does that work to buy what you want to have so assume that you have you

4:36have your either your crypto wallet or you have a hardware wallet like what we issues I think we just launched last year the hardware Wallet card and basically you can spend with your own wallet or with the hardware Wallet card so you walked into the store and you order a coffee latte and then the merchant they key in the fiat currency amount because in most of

5:05country they use their own currency as a legal tender so you gain the local currency amount and then Expos were converted into how much that they would not they would need to charge in crypto for the clients for example if people would like to pay in Bitcoin and then it's converted into the Bitcoin value and then the value has shows up on the expost the customer will actually

5:32scan the QR code and then to enter the amount that shows on the X to pay for their coffees so this is one way that if you have your private wallet if you have a hardware wallet is the process even more intuitive it's just like what you have spent on your credit card so just tap the card on the xos and then automatically all the transaction

6:00is been done and then you will get the receive or records on chain both receive from the xos and also you will see it on chain the records on chain so it's it's pretty amazing and it's very transparent it's very cool and with the actual real World Adoption of people wanting to spend their crypto or you know say you're earning a crypto you

6:26sort of need to without having to convert it back I want to buy groceries and pay the bills are you seeing certain are you seeing certain regions that are more Innovative and forward-looking towards this certain countries or regions you know where where's the best place if you were somebody that was wanted to live in crypto where are you seeing the most adoption with pundy x in

6:47this type of payments right now yes very good question basically we will think about if you spend with your crypto and then you will spend Bitcoin or anything like maybe ethereum but however from our records mostly they use stable coin they spend in stable coins and I can relate it to this situation because for some people

7:16they might want to hold their Bitcoin is the Bitcoin value is increasing over time for them and they will set aside some crypto that in stable coins that they would like to spend and it's very reasonable for those users that they when they spend crypto they actually spend in usdt and we support usdt across different chains include Tron Network include B&B smart chain

7:44and also ethereum and we see the uptate on Tron network has been really huge I would say it's like over 60% or 70% on Tron Network because the gas Fe is so much cheaper on the Tron Network and also adoption they on the physical size is quite large so we see this transactions is very large there in terms of the countries

8:13As you see that we push the exports to over 30 countries in the world and we see different situation spending habits and then we found that we end up with in turkey and in South Africa and also a country whereby their currency has been devaluating against US dollar their uptate on crypto is very very high basically

8:43a lot of people adopt crypto to be like a store of value assets so that they won't be suffer from the devaluation of their own fiat currency in their own countries so in terms of the transactions we see a lot of exchange going on in Turkey because in Turkey basically you cannot

9:12accept crypto as a payment this is a law that is Banning the payment side but you will see a lot of U crypto exchange like a foreign exchange pop up in the street of in Turkey so people may just when they have the paycheck or when they would like to have a crypto they free a store in crypto

9:40they would go to the physical store Front to actually exchange a lra into into into crypto and also there are a lot of tourists in turkey and then they if they would like to spend crypto sorry spend L and then they can go to one of the store they can exchange your crypto into L to spend in other store as well so in Turkey we can we actually

10:06operate in a different modules it's not the traditional payment thing it's more like a exchange business model physical exchange and in this way the merchants and the customer the merchant see the customer in face face to face so they actually know who are you dealing with and who are you transacting with and is it's everywhere in Turkey you can see the adoption there is very very

10:34good and in South Africa we see more from the payment side and also some interesting use case that popping up in South Africa so in South Africa basically we Implement the Bitcoin basically for Bitcoin we implement the lightning Network first and then we see a lot of update from

11:00the people who want to use Bitcoin Manet to transact as as you know the Bitcoin Manet is very very slow so it takes about 10 to 30 30 minutes to have the first block confirmation and then it may take as long as a whole day to confirm the transactions so we thought that this type of a transaction won't happen on the retail side but I think

11:29those people who want to spend crypto Bitcoin on the Manet they already has been educated because day today they doing Bitcoin Manet transaction so they know how long it takes so they're willing to wait and then they're willing to pay in on the Manet so that's why we integrate Bitcoin Manet into our P machine so that our Merchant can capture this demand and

11:59We also see the World War assets that has been the application has been popping up in South Africa for example we have integrate we have list PG which is the gold back tokens and with the goldcoin physical goldcoin U Merchants so basically they sell goldcoin the physical gold coin to their customer and then now the customer

12:28has the options to either pay with their pasg to exchange exchange physical gold coin so it's realized in the physical retail points that you can actually use your crypto to exchange your gold back crypto to exchange your the gold and vice versa you can also use your gold to exchange

12:57crypto as well so our Merchant actually helped to realize this type of application in our real life situation wow that's very cool PCO the I've I've heard a lot I've seen a lot of projects trying to figure out before the growth of the rwa real world asset tokenization trying to build a

13:24crypto that's backed by gold and it wasn't really done properly but I feel like now with the proper tokenization of real world assets gold is be it can become more than just the store of value versus a payment that was so inefficient because you got to carry it around it's heavy and how do you divide it but with real world asset tokenization I feel like we people you

13:50know might be trading gold if the inflation continues of these countries that you're talking about U that have high adoption on the OS terminal I feel like North America hasn't really realized that yet because there is inflation there as well but it's it's more hidden They Don't Really it's sort of a hidden inflation that they I'm sure we eventually see that hey

14:12everything's really getting expensive it's already been happening in the last few years and I've also seen the price of gold go up so that's really interesting on the real world assets side that pundy is getting involved in that do you think that part of the industry will grow exponentially in the next year or a few years for go specifically I think

14:39there are there are demands from all over the world that the Central Bank in different countries are buying gold especially when they were kind of like thinking like they're Fair forward thinking when the US announced the rate cut that might affect the value of US dollars so they need a tool to mitigate the risk of the

15:08devaluation of the of a certain currency so they started to buy gold from from the market and then kind of like drive up the price and of course there is some application like the jury and also you know there are set a certain country like they prefer go very specifically China and

15:37they and also in India and in also in South Africa and also in Turkey they love gold I think turkey also as any assets that can store value they love it so they are actually facing the currency devaluation so they would look at the vehicle to store the value of the of the assets they hold so

16:05in terms of the trend whether the gold can be traded in the store frame I believe there will be that Trend going on because the upate the demand of the gold is increasing especially when we approach the time we when the fat is going to cut the rates and then it will become more demand will become more stronger so hopefully we will'll see

16:36if is realized I mean not only just holding the physical gold but also the gold back crypto because the world is starting to accept cryptocurrency as a assets digital assets around the world mhm now I'm definitely seeing more adoption of crypto assets and I'm curious on what you think about you know the two biggest events the main one being the

17:05Bitcoin ETF launch in the beginning of 2024 for the US and now we're seeing ethereum ETF and hopefully a trickle down of other crypto assets moving into ETFs I feel like that is a huge step towards people understanding more about crypto and not just using it as a store of value but also using it as a payment method as well so do you think that

17:30those events will influence the amount of people that want to pay using crypto on terminals like the piac PS definitely I think Bitcoin spot ETF and also ethereum spot ETF got approved by SEC is really giving a very significant signal and also the meaning to the crypto industry it means that they recognize that this is a

18:01the commodity that you can exchange for values so I think this would open up a huge liquidity for Bitcoin and also for ethereum hopefully with the ethereum approv and then all the layer one that are using State proof of stake mechanism that could follow this

18:30rules to enter this the crypto spot ETF for people especially for the institutions buyers larger institution that would inject more liquidity into crypto so it could possibly affect it on the retail side that they are starting to look at what if they cannot access to bitcoin ETF for example in Taiwan we cannot

19:01buy Bitcoin ETF or in other country they cannot buy Bitcoin ETF and why don't you buy Bitcoin instead and you can buy in the exchange there exchange that has been legalize and then once you have Bitcoin and then you will say okay I have a Bitcoin and then what if I travel around the world and then if I don't have enough cash or you don't want to

19:30exchange the local currency or anything like that if there's any of this situation happen then you will definitely need Expos which is PS Expos either to help the merchants to accept cryptocurrency or help the foreign exchange that can expand the service of their portfolio that they can not just offer the fiat currency exch they can also offer the crypto exchange for

20:01their customers yeah know it's a beautiful thing to be able to if you're especially with the growth of digital Nomads or just international travel to be able to have a currency that you don't have to keep exchanging for different currencies because I know you know any money remittance transfers and exchanges they're charging you 10 20% like ridiculous amounts that I

20:26feel like crypto would solve all of that and I feel like the owners of the shops they don't have to do a lot of work because the terminal is doing it in the Fiat value right yes basically all we support over 18 180 Fiat input value that you can use input the local currency that you prefer to have and then exchange to the crypto

20:55values so in this way for merchants they have the flexibility of accepting crypto so that in and at the back end when they receive the crypto is in stable coins and it's not fluctuating like the market price so that they can ensure that they can receive a stable value of the currency or the access that they have

21:25received when I walk around towns that are not my hometown say I'm traveling I see that a business is accepting crypto or Bitcoin you know in the window sign it's still like a fun novelty you're like you're like impressed you're like wow they're actually accepting Bitcoin and I feel like more businesses at this point should be accepting it should

21:46be common like okay good they're on board as well not like wow it's the only shop you know when when you guys started in 2017 with this mission to bring more crypto payments globally did you think that we would be at where we're at now with you know say the next Bull Run is coming the crypto payment adoption for retail stores is still fairly low is that what you expected or

22:13do you think it was underwhelming we start this Mission this project with the mission to get crypto widely adopted so in our mind we thought this should be happening maybe it should be happening earlier but there are regulations there are a lot of different rules and then the government start figuring out this assets so they are starting to kind of

22:39like giving a definition what is this cryptocurrency should should it be a security or should it be a commodity should it be a currency so you when you see different government actually you see different definition of crypto assets so if you see El Salvador and they legalize Bitcoin as a legal tender so it's a it's a legal tender in elad but if you go to another country maybe

23:07Indonesia it's a commodity so in us we don't know it's commodity or security there's no definition yet so it's actually difficult for the mer Merchants to get involved because as you see there's not many business that would be open for cryptocurrency as a payment because they don't know what their government will do with this

23:35cryptocurrency so I think the definition of cryptocurrency is very important in when when the government decided how to make crypto accessible for the people and also PE what people need what people want also communicate to the government and then the government will be more open to this option because they know that this is a inevitable chain and also people

24:03want to own assets of their own because for us we use cryptocurrency because we know that this cryptocurrency is belongs to us we have the ownership over the cryptocurrency but if we own a fiat currency and then it's it's a government government government assets and it's it's like a IOU that government sent to you so it's different so I think

24:33the mindset has been different and also people are asking for it they kind of realize that I want to own the assets of my own I want the flexibility yeah that's a great point with all of the different government bodies and I feel I'm seeing that it's more of a bottomup approach rather than top down you know it's the people first that come and they see the

24:59hyperinflation they see the value more clearly than the government does in hey we should be using this so that we're not losing all of our wealth with the inflation that most of the time government has a big part to do with and rather than the government saying hey let's actually adopt this currency because it's good for the country and it's it's so different in

25:19all the countries that they all have different rates of adoption if only it was as simple as having a you know we started with Bitcoin and everyone already had a Global Currency and we were all on the same page life would be great but I think we might get there eventually we're definitely strides ahead than we were in 2017 but I feel like there's still a long way to

25:43go I think the currency no matter is a fiat currency or the digital currency is built on trust so more people trust in this system and then you can actually attract more people to accept it so based on this trust then we will be able to have a certain like digital assets has been recognized by people and then

26:10to be to accept by people so and then that and then that could generate the usage so it's all because of trust and different trust has been built on in different situations some build upon what government has said and some Trust actually as you said buil from the bottom up so from the bottom up approach then that would be more powerful for the

26:37Democratic countries when the authority they when they have elections and then they will listen to what people's want and then to give what people's want right because they want to win the elections so I think this is very important that we voice our idea our choice to the government then then then they would listen to

27:05us and then they can gradually open to this venue and looking forward I the ethereum ETF hasn't you know it's been approved but it's not trading yet I think that's going to be a Floodgate towards more crypto assets more adoption more than Bitcoin because the ethereum network has smart contracts it has other layer twos other currencies on it so

27:30I'm really excited to see how that plays out into Real World Adoption I would like to know from you and your team at pundy X how are you going to continue to push the growth of crypto payments over the next 12 months hopefully into a major super cycle of Bitcoin and ethereum but how can we translate that into actually more people using it as a currency to pay for real world

27:55things it's very very good question when we push this system out we also see there are different educational level that we need to give give to the merchants and in the future we want to lower the adoption barrier so not just only operating the PA system but also in a very easy way that for the merchants to ass set crypto so we

28:24will come up with a different initiative that for without even without the point of sales machine that the merchants can accept crypto very easily so and also we're looking at what AI has been brought to us and I think this is very super important that we adopt this technology into our product sets to make sure that first of all the all the

28:55process is automatically completed and also that would beneficial for the merchants to recognize the transaction whether the transactions is fraud or is a is a suspicious transaction so there are different use cases for AI on payment we would like to adopt it to make the payment process even easier for the merchants and also for the authority as

29:24well so that they won't have too much concern on crypto being used as a payment we hope that could that would be our plan for the next few years that's great to hear PCO I completely agree I think that there's definitely ways to lower the barrier to entry for merchants not just on the education but making a terminal that's you know cheaper easier to use something

29:53that you can H you can put in the shop and they don't have to know anything they don't have to buy a terminal things like that so I'm really looking forward to seeing how that plays out and I'm wishing pundex all the best in helping crypto become more of a payment method around the world what is the best place for people to learn more about the terminal or about where

30:14they can go and actually buy coffee or whatever they want with crypto and try out the py system yes we have we have our a merchant map on our website ww. ps.com so when you go to website you when you click the Expos and then you can see the location map so when you click on the location map you can see a bunch of merchants that has the Expos machines hopefully we will increase more

30:40machine when we when our Merchant has been comply with the local regulations and then also you can follow our Twitter account PX Labs so that you can receive all kinds of information especially we want to push more people to adopt crypto we will do airdrop with our loyalty token Pur to the people who engage with PX to

31:10spread the words about crypto adoption crypto payments because we want this concept to be spread among all the people they we want it to be part of their people's life so engage with our account and then we have dis loyalty tokens for those who want to engage with us they can be reward by spreading rewards and also we have the layer one blockchain which is function X that

31:40would help us to integrate different blockchain and then to offer a payment Network decentralized payment Network for those who are doing cross change or doing defi service and they would like to get into more deeper knowledge about crypto so they can also engage for the experienced crypto users and they can use this

32:10those Service as well very cool I can leave the link to the website and the socials and it's great to hear about that purse airdrop as well I love those I want to check that out and share it in the show notes below for the viewers I appreciate all your insights into cpal payments and you and your team's efforts on getting crypto adopted as a payment method around the world thank

32:34you so much PCO for coming on and all the best with everything with pundy X and let's definitely follow up in the near future thank you Ashley I'm very very H happy and glad to meet you again