Q1 2020 progress report

Dear Pundians,

Thank you for your time to participate in the Q1 2020 video progress report.

Here’s the agenda of AMA Q1 report:

• COVID-19 Impact
• Q1 Results
• Relief plans for merchants
• Strategy and outlook
• Development in progress

COVID-19 Impact

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affected everyone globally, and we also see another kind of epidemic, if I may, in the financial market. Governments are trying to mitigate the impact, and Wall Street just had one of its worst quarters in history.

One of the things Pundi X and Function X has been doing is to institute a work-from-home policy for all employees. Our team in Shenzhen has been working from home since late January, and the Singapore team has started to work from home even before the government announcement.

Working remotely has always been a practice for us since we have nine offices and over 100 employees around the world. The decision to stay at home is both considering the best interests of our employees and not affecting the efficiency of our work. We take this very seriously, and our output of work is high.

BOB delivery in the second half of 2020

Due to the current situation of COVID-19, we are expecting the factory to slowly resume productions. We will take the advice from the local government to see how we could proceed. Regardless, the delivery of BOB pre-orders will take place surely.

Offline retail challenges

The stay-home and social distancing measures are affecting the physical retail shops. It has also affected over 70% of transactions on XPOS. We’re taking measures to bring things online.

During this period, we realized that the decision makers are looking even more seriously into the rollout of digital currency. In fact, we are receiving notices from several governments that they are exploring the opportunities of digital currency implementation.

While we’re very sad about the pandemic, perhaps the governments have also realized that in this time of significant challenges, the digital currency movement should be pushed faster. This might speed up the adoption of digital currency and cryptocurrency.

Q1 Results

XWallet user growth

The usage of XWallet is growing even after Carnival. I’d like to thank you all for continuously using XWallet and giving us feedback.

During Carnival, we introduced Crypto Gift and we have seen communities creating groups in social media, even with friends and families, to send and receive crypto through this feature. We’re happy to see the high activities of Crypto Gift and thank you to the community for supporting it.

We are also close to 800,000 XWallet registered users. Here’s the growth ranking of Q1 2020. As we can see, the adoption of XWallet is happening globally.

The number of Q1 2020 transaction is lower, around ⅔ compared to the previous quarter due to the reduced XPOS transactions affected by COVID-19.

Token removal in Q1 2020

• The NPXS removal amount is 14,462,405.43 (14.4 Million)
• The NPXSXEM removal amount is 8,063,151.2 (8 Million)
• In sum, we will remove 22,525,556 (22.5 Million) NPXS and NPXSXEM permanently from the total supply on April 11, 2020.

The 22.5 million token removal is a 90% decrease from the last quarter, due to the allocation of the transaction fee to our XPOS® merchants, and the ending of token removal for the conversion of NPXS/ NPXSXEM to FX.

Due to COVID-19, merchants are in a challenging situation. We would like to contribute and support our merchants as much as we can.

DApps

Secondly, we will focus more on the online channels to increase transactions and cryptocurrency utilization through XWallet.

• Crypto IDR

Crypto IDR is a DApp on XWallet which people can use to convert cryptocurrency into Indonesian fiat currency (IDR). It is available for the Indonesian market.

• Crypto Bull

Crypto Bull is a new Defi DApp in XWallet, offering protection of users’ principal and a risk-free way to grow their crypto assets.

Here is how it works.

Crypto Bull offers plans for users to purchase with conditions. If the buying price becomes lower than the market price when the plan matures, you will automatically get your fund back. If higher, you will get the tokens you intend to buy. We will launch the plans for users to buy NPXS, NPXSXEM or FX with BTC, ETH or USDT as a start.

For example. Assume a plan is offering the buying price is 1 NPXS = 1USDT and this offer has a time period of 7 days. Bob has bought the plan and paid 10 USDT for 10 NPXS.

If after 7 days, the price of NPXS has dropped to 1 NPXS = 0.9 USDT, Bob will return that 10 NPXS to Pundi X, and receive 10 USDT;

If after 7 days, the price of NPXS has increased to 1 NPXS = 1.1 USDT, Bob will keep the 10 NPXS.

What differentiates Crypto Bull from the traditional option is:

1. User will get the tokens instead of the ‘right’ itself.

2. Auto execution — the system will pick the higher value option for them.

3. We are offering the purchase of digital tokens with contractual protection.

The product is now on the Whitelist testing for the a few community members and is scheduled for public launch in 2 weeks.

COVID-19 Relief plan for merchants

XPOS® Relief plan

• 50 XPOS® giveaways

To help with combating the COVID-19 situation, we are announcing 50 XPOS® giveaways for those who have physical retail storefronts and embrace crypto adoptions. With XPOS®, they will have extra revenue when handling crypto transactions.

• XPOS Handy at 45% discount

Starting from now until 30 April 2020, 50 units of the Handy will also be available at a special price of $149 each (the retail price is US$270).
This offer is available to all. We will announce the details for registration soon.

MakerDao Plan

On the other hand, together with MakerDao, we have also launched the Crypto Merchant program. 100 XPOS® terminals are available for free to the Brazilian market.

For more information, go to: Pundi X and MakerDAO launch the Crypto Merchant program in LATAM markets

Strategy and outlook

WorldPay makes crypto sales possible with accepting credit card payments on XPOS

We have successfully ported the XPOS® platform on the PAX A921 model to facilitate the credit card transactions through the support of World Pay, the leading U.S. merchant acquirer who has received the most transaction processing volume in 2019 for the US market.

This collaboration is being led by one of our dedicated XPOS® official distributors, BTC King, to make the feature of accepting credit cards when doing crypto sale transactions on XPOS® a reality. We are doing more testing at this moment to ensure the experience is smooth.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank our distributors, who I have the pleasure to meet in person and the others I’d like to meet in the future, for your local knowledge and the faith in pushing crypto adoption. It is our duty to support distributors so that you can continue to distribute our solution to the market.

Online channels

In this quarter, we have also launched XPOS® on NewEgg Commerce platform in the US as well as activated e-commerce feature in the Pundi X Brazilian site where Brazilian merchants can buy XPASS cards with crypto pre-loaded.

On Pundi X Venezuela site, Venezuelan users can easily transfer their fiat currency through bank accounts to acquire cryptocurrency.

We look forward to more of such websites to cater to the needs of the local markets.

Find XWallet and NPXS on more Samsung new devices

More Samsung mobile devices have supported the Blockchain Keystore and Samsung Blockchain Wallet, including Galaxy A90 and Galaxy A71. This year more new flagship devices, Galaxy Z Flip and Galaxy S20 series will come with the Blockchain Keystore and Samsung Blockchain Wallet. This means you will be able to find XWallet and NPXS on these new Samsung mobile devices.

Compliance

At Pundi X, we’ve also looked into how we can better comply with the local regulation. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced the commencement of the Payment Services Act (PS Act) to enhance the regulatory framework for payment services in Singapore, strengthen consumer protection and promote confidence in the use of e-payments, including cryptocurrency payments. We are in the process of applying licenses for providing account issuance and digital payment token services in Singapore. At this moment, we’ve received an exemption from holding a license to operate both services till 28 July 2020.

For more information, go to: Compliance: update on license applications and exemption granted

Partnership with schools for blockchain research and development

In late February, the European University Cyprus and Pundi X 365, our European entity focusing on blockchain enterprise solution, have signed an MoU under the witness of President of the Parliament of the Republic of Cyprus to explore the best and most productive way of using Blockchain technology that can be adopted by the Cyprus-based companies. These include healthcare, legal framework, financial technology (fintech), education technology (ed-tech), shipping, registry, accreditation, charity, and more.

Also, the cooperation aims to issue postgraduate and professional certifications in the field of blockchain technology and to participate in EU programs to implement blockchain technology.

Development in progress

Function X is built for any kind of transaction that wishes to be decentralized.

Function X testnet will be launched in Q2 2020 with t

• Function X Explorer, where we will take XPOS transaction on chain anonymously.

• Function Cloud where we can quickly help enterprise solutions

Here are the sneak peek of what we are working on which is the Function X Cloud.

As mentioned in Hash Out articles, Function X is the hub (the parent chain) and will be connected to different chains. For example, a bank wants to build a private chain. This private chain can be built and use Function X technology. The way to help these businesses to build their own chains is to use this platform called Function X Cloud through simple procedures, including creating the chain, nodes, consensus model and tokens on the cloud in a fully decentralized way. It’s still rough, but it has been taking shape.

For more details of how Function X works, visit our Function X: Hash Out January, February, and March. We would like to invite our community members to participate as validators and build the ecosystem together. Both explorer and cloud platform will be on the testnet.

Lastly, please stay safe and stay vigilant, especially at this point of time. All Pundi X and Function X members are working from home. We hope our community members are doing the same to keep yourself safe and healthy.

We hope this pandemic will end soon. When the time comes, we will be ready to push for greater adoption.

For full video session, you can watch it at https://youtu.be/lQkZYd1txFE

Q1 2020 progress report was originally published in Pundi X on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.