Singapore-based Payment Solutions Provider CoinPip has teamed up with 37Coins to bring an SMS wallet to the region.
CoinPip is excited to offer the opportunity for consumers to pay in bitcoin from absolutely any mobile device with SMS functionality.
The company has gained attention with their BOOST events, promoting Bitcoin throughout the region in an intimate setting with a hands-on and educational approach. They saw a real need to rapidly integrate this service for their users on Apple devices or with dumb phones.
Co-founder of CoinPip, Anson Zeall, is planning to expand to Hong Kong and Indonesia in the coming weeks, eventually introducing the wallet throughout South East Asia, in areas where 3G connections are still very limited.
Anson informs us that:
“The mobile market in South East Asia is extremely massive but the usage of smartphones is still lagging. So QR code scanning is not that useful. Thus the collaboration with 37coins is going to make payments more convenient for everyone else.”
After trying out the system myself, I must say that 37coins has managed to create a unique and user friendly SMS experience. By messaging “hi” to the nearest SMS gateway listed, the user receives a welcome text message from a local gateway and is ready to go. It is this gateway model that makes the 37Coins approach unique.
Instead of seeking permission from local telecom providers, the 37Coins system operates through ‘gateways’. These are local people in each country running a special program on any Android device. Anyone can run a gateway. By running the gateway an individual operator will receive a fraction of any transaction going through their service.
In this way the 37Coins model mimics the Bitcoin network itself. By embracing decentralisation it is essentially impossible to shut down. It can also benefit from the exponential network growth that comes with the economic incentives built directly into the network. Individual operators are free to join and leave at will. All they need is an android device.
CTO of 37Coins, Johann Barbie notes that:
“The 37coins gateway system is distributed, and modeled after Bitcoin itself. A person that deploys a gateway gets a tiny % of the transaction which turns it into an entrepreneurial opportunity.”
CoinPip showed incredible forethought with this integration. The company has, at the same time, recently introduced its first release of an online API for merchants that want to accept bitcoin online and uploaded the CoinPip Merchant POS app to the Google Play store.
They will be launching all of this at the BOOST:Bitcoin event on 7th May.
CoinPip is a startup with a vision to make bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as safe and easy-to-use as any other form of money. Starting in the Asian market, it intends to take the CoinPip system to the world marketplace, distributing SMS, Card and Mobile wallets and its merchant services, one business and customer at a time.
