WyzePay

Idea

Introduction

WyzePay believes it’s time for a new relationship between small businesses and their customers, one that brings more benefits for both sides. With WyzePay, customers and businesses connect directly from pre-purchase, creating a deeper relationship.

We are a platform for the issuance and sale of corporate digital currency. We make it easy for organisations to set up, sell, and accept their own digital coins, empowering customers to get more value for their money directly with businesses they buy from and trust

For businesses, WyzePay consolidates the advance of working capital, customer acquisition and retention, and consumer behaviour analytics into one turnkey platform. We create direct digital engagement with customers, giving businesses visibility of future purchase plans and individual price elasticity, which allows for better-targeted promotions.

For customers, WyzePay is a marketplace to find discounts, where they can buy, manage and spend their currency. Customers receive tangible financial benefits while helping local businesses to prosper, by giving them advance revenue, improving cash flow in exchange for discounts and other benefits such as exclusive promotions.

Substantial accomplishments to date

Proof-of-concept (POC): We developed a technology that allows companies to issue a company-specific digital currency. Built on a 3-tiered architecture centred on Elements blockchain, the currency stores:

- a value to be spent with the issuing company

- conditions for spending that optimise benefits for both company and customers, e.g., a discount with a time-lock

Coins are stored in a digital wallet that can be used as a payment method on NFC terminals or online. They can’t be lost or stolen, are fully transferable, and never expire.

WyzePay’s POC is fully functional, and we are ready to execute the next steps. This means we believe that we can launch to market in as little as 5 months.

Market validation interviews: we successfully validated our product and business model by interviewing C-level executives in leading UK and EU companies in retail, FMCG, e-commerce, hospitality and gaming. This generated interest in potential commercial engagements from two high-street retailers, an e-commerce, and a major app monetisation platform.

Legal framework: Regulation on digital assets is new and evolving. We want to ensure all parties in the WyzePay ecosystem are safe and that we are compliant with financial market regulations, so we undertook a regulatory study with our legal team at Collyer Bristow LLP. This thorough work, conducted specifically for us, concluded WyzePay is not subject to regulations or licences in the UK. This reduces operating costs and increases freedom to scale.

Monetisation strategy

As a platform that solves financial and marketing pain points, WyzePay can be used by a wide array of companies with a focus on different benefits, from cash-flow improvement to marketing and data, as well as a combination of all.

We will monetise using a transaction fee structure that varies depending on size (so we can offer benefits that fit different companies), as well as the nature of the transaction (ensuring that what we charge is proportional to the value we are adding).

Our platform is designed to be highly scalable, allowing us to grow quickly once the production version is fully developed (Q3-Q4 2021). The main guiding principles for product development are:
1) To create a product that is easy to use for both businesses and customers, creating value while requiring as little behavioural change as possible to facilitate adoption.
2) To build on an architecture that allows for lean infrastructure with low operational and support costs.

By following these, we expect our sales to grow at a far higher rate than our costs. As we scale over the initial years, most of our spending will be allocated to building strong sales and in-house development teams, aiming for accelerated growth.

Use of proceeds

Product Development:
Further develop our product to take it from proof-of-concept to the next, ready-to-market version. Work will be undertaken by the same team that developed the proof-of-concept. Improvements include non-functional requirements for security and integration and added data analytics capabilities.

Team:
With a proven product and business model, we want to accelerate scale by growing the team in two key areas:
1) Marketing and Sales: hiring an experienced professional to lead our go-to-market and marketing efforts, and building our growth team
2) In-house development: adding a full-time CTO and a team of developers to start ramping up our in-house development capabilities

The balance of funds will be used for Marketing initiatives and day-to-day operational expenses.