How to Spend Your Cryptocurrencies in ANY Online Store

Recent trends have led us away from the previous mantra of spend and replace, encouraging use of Bitcoin with any relevant merchant that accepts it. These new trends along with rising fees have led to events such as Steam, Expedia, and Stripe discontinuing acceptance of Bitcoin.

At aXpire, we want to help encourage further use of Bitcoin that is both low-fee and newcomer-friendly. We want to help Bitcoin be easily spent and accepted online, without necessarily needing to understand the intricacies of the Lightning Network. Our application PayBX is our attempt at doing just that, allowing users to spend Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies in any online store.

The owner of the store does not need to know about cryptocurrencies, nor do they need to integrate anything. You spend crypto, they receive FIAT. This means that the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, and eBay are all available for purchases with Bitcoin.

Meet PayBX

PayBX is a payments mobile application for iOS and Android that integrates with centralized and decentralized exchanges, wallet providers, and more. PayBX indexes your cryptocurrency holdings across different wallet and exchange providers and allows you to create virtual debit cards funded with the cryptocurrencies of your choice. These debit cards can then be used anywhere online. Spend in any online store, ranging from your friend Joe’s Shopify store to the internet giants Amazon and eBay. You spend FIAT with crypto, all while enjoying low fees and great conversion rates.

To start with, we’re partnering with a Japanese FinTech unicorn to allow users access to our app. Store crypto with this unicorn, link your account via API to PayBX, create a card, and spend away.

The best part of it all? There’s no monthly fee, card setup fee, or anything. There’s only a fair and modest transaction fee made clearly visible to you. Create as many cards as you want, when you want, for no added cost.

What about an Ethereum Card? Sure, that’d work.

NB: example card provider

Or perhaps a Monero Card? Not a bad idea, that works too.

NB: example card provider

Our Partners

A currently unnamed FinTech unicorn is one of our key partners, helping drive PayBX towards its realization as a product. They are a centralized exchange providing the central funding and wallet structure for the product, allowing us to focus on the other core functions of the product. We are not holding custody of any of our users’ funds whatsoever, leaving it in the hands of those with pre-established secure systems in place.

With time, we will work to integrate further exchanges, wallet providers, and more as funding options for PayBX’s cards. These planned integrations also include decentralized funding options. Realistically, centralized options makes it easier for newcomers, but we want to be open to all — from the most decentralized blockchain enthusiast to a complete newcomer to the crypto-space.

Another partner that we have not introduced yet, but that we can name, is Decent Labs. Decent Labs is a venture and development shop that we’ve partnered with for their blockchain expertise and especially for their interest in the PayBX product. They’ll help us finalize the product before its launch which is right around the corner.

Our Goals

You might be wondering: “what are the long term goals of PayBX?”

It’s a simple question, but there’s really no simple answer.

We want to grow, of course, however in the long term we wish to become a one-stop shop for everyday transactions, forming an ecosystem with which the average retail user can interact with both cryptocurrencies and FIAT currencies. Our goals are aligned with that of the wider cryptocurrency space; we wish to make crypto, currency — we want to lower the adoption barriers to a point where anyone can use crypto anywhere.

Currently, a lot of our competitors require the merchant to integrate a piece of their technology for users to spend in their stores. We do not require this at all, allowing for a much more universal application where you just spend where you want.

We are putting adoption above all with our beautiful design and ensuring this application can be used by anyone from cryptocurrency novice through to technology experts. This is accomplished through us being comfortable to interweave with existing payment rails to make our product a success.

We are not thinking that we are the “endgame” of crypto. We are just one of the many cutting-edge solutions which will allow anyone access to the liberating technology of cryptos. Not all crypto use will be P2P, and not all companies will necessarily integrate — we are providing a platform where the decentralized meets centralized, and there traditional finance meets crypto.

About the Author

Matt Markham is the COO and Co-Founder of aXpire. His background originates in finance and he studied Economics (Hons.) and Healthcare at Brown University.