PROJECT OVERVIEW.
ICO date: 2nd November.
UTRUST is a revolutionary payment platform that enables buyers to use their favorite cryptocurrency in order to pay sellers (private or merchants). They are providing sellers with the safety and convenience of receiving funds in fiat currency, and offer the best consumer-protection to buyers, by acting as trusted mediators. They combine the best payment protection features of current generation fiat systems with the innovative features of blockchain while blending in the unique features provided by their own token.
BACKGROUND.
Despite the industrial disruption and technological advances that blockchain provides, one area that is still largely untapped is digital payments between buyers and sellers of physical services. Digital payment systems have been a holdout of larger industry incumbents, with more legacy APIs and agreements with traditional financial institutions, banks and credit cards.
Despite the advantages of crypto payments, such as ultra-low fees, speed and low barrier of entry, clear and developed advancement in transactional security has yet to be implemented to the market. Buyers desire and have come to expect a robust consumer protection system that protects their purchases and provides refunds. Sellers on the other hand would love to earn more revenue but are cautious of the volatility issues associated with accepting cryptocurrencies. Wouldn’t it be amazing to have the best of both worlds, this is the mutual trust dilemma that is aimed at being solved with the UTRUST Platform.
They will build a next-generation payment gateway allowing buyers to use their favorite cryptocurrency to buy goods and services with confidence from merchants, incorporating a robust PayPal-like consumer protection and dispute resolution scheme. They aim to drive adoption of the API by merchants by providing them a way to receive fiat currency directly from cryptocurrency buyers, shielding the merchant from market volatility and decreasing the risk of accepting crypto-currency.
HOW IT WORKS.
Here is a typical user interaction flow with the platform:
- The merchant sets an article for sale on the marketplace with the specific price he/she intends to receive in their local currency. The marketplace offers prospective buyers with a wide range of payment options at checkout, including UTRUST.
- Since the merchant wants to target as many young online buyers as possible, he/she offers UTRUST payment as a prominent checkout option, the buyer can select and take advantage of the best possible protection from the UTRUST platform.
- A buyer sees the offer and thinks it’s a great deal for the price the merchant offers.
- When the buyer selects UTRUST as a payment method, he/she can choose to use funds from any of their existing cryptocurrency wallets as a source of funds (e.g.: Bitcoin, Ethereum address) or use their UTRUST funds. If he/she has not created an account with UTRUST at this stage, he/she can do so now or just proceed and pay.
- The buyer will be shown a description of the total amount to be paid, including a 1% commission and exchange conversion fees (from the crypto amount to the fiat amount). The description is transparent and updated every 2 minutes.
- The buyer completes the transaction and the amount is sent to UTRUST. The system converts the cryptocurrency amount to fiat and holds it in escrow until its released to the seller. The specific duration of this hold period will vary depending on the merchant performance history.
- The merchant is then notified of an incoming purchase and that the amount has been sent by the buyer and is pending release. If this is a trusted merchant with a high-performance rating, the funds will be released almost immediately. If the merchant is a newcomer to the platform with no prior history the hold period can take several days. As the merchant establishes a track record of successful transactions, his performance rating will increase, hereby progressively decreasing the hold period.
- If everything goes smoothly, the buyer receives the article, the seller receives the funds and no dispute is opened. Another happy customer and another successful sale for the merchant increasing his performance.
- But let’s imagine that something does go wrong. For example, perhaps the buyer did not receive the article from the merchant due to an incorrect address. He decides to open a dispute, escalating the issue. At this escalation stage, both parties enter a self-resolution chat, where they try to amicably come to mutual agreeable terms. This can mean the merchant acknowledging a shipping mistake and fixing the issue, voluntarily refunding the buyer, or the buyer acknowledging the goods were received. These few examples are among a multitude of possible scenarios.
- If both parties do not come to terms in 7 days, the buyer has the option to escalate the claim to a mediator. In this instance, a UTRUST operator joins the chat resolution and serves as mediator and arbitrator with final say on the dispute outcome. Proceeding with an escalation will incur a fee of 2% over the amount in hold if a buyer refund is issued by the UTRUST mediator.
- From this point onwards, the UTRUST mediator takes control of the chat, collecting evidence from both parties and either issues a refund to the buyer or releases the funds to the seller. If the merchant loses the dispute (due to scam or fraud), a corresponding performance downgrade will occur, which will translate to a higher hold period for future transactions. Any buyer refunds are issued in UTRUST tokens, converted from fiat at current market value.
USE CASES.
Buyers.
For buyers, Utrust aims to minimize the risk of scams and fraud while paying online, providing full payment protection of purchases and acting as mediator of all transactions. They strive to be the best choice for buyers, by minimizing the amount of service fees for each transaction in comparison to other system. Their goal is to increase the purchasing power of cryptocurrency by providing buyers more and safer outlets to spend their acquired crypto-holdings, which will further drive the variety of merchant offers, expand market consumption and size.
Merchants.
For merchants, Utrust aims to provide a way to expand their client base and sale revenue by targeting a wider audience of cryptocurrency holders. This untapped market of users has amassed a large number of assets that continue to grow in valuation with limited outlets that stimulate spending. By providing the merchants the ability to receive in fiat currency, they will tackle one of the major gripes of accepting cryptocurrencies in a highly volatile economy, effectively shielding the merchant against crypto volatility and assuring the amount received for the purchase. Additionally, they will mitigate common risks associated with traditional payment methods by removing the possibility of chargebacks, stolen credit card information and fraud.
UTK USES.
The UTRUST token will not only have a role in the UTRUST Platform as an accepted token alongside other cryptocurrencies offering the advantage of fee waivering, but will also be synergistically tied to the platform in a strategic value coupling. Each time a buyer pays with any cryptocurrency via the UTRUST payment platform, a small percentage of the transactional fee is removed from the market and burned in the form of a UTRUST token. This reduces the token supply further driving demand, the adoption of the platform, and the value for contributors.
ROADMAP.
SIMILAR PROJECTS.
Monetha.
Monetha is their biggest rival at the moment. Concept and all look alike. Additionally at Monetha there is a profit sharing concept for token holders unlike a buy back by Utrust.
HOW IS IT DIFFERENT FROM OTHER PROJECTS IN THE SPACE?
Their business model is different. They are the first and only platform to provide buyer protection on crypto payments. They also accept most cryptocurrencies while Monetha accepts Ethereum.
USER REVIEWS.
[I’m still reading but I’m not seeing much here other than something that’s already being done.]
[Regarding your mention that this is something that has been done, you are correct. PayPal does it for example. However, it’s being done in traditional payment systems, not in crypto. Nowadays if you pay with cryptocurrency in the main platforms you are left in the dark in terms of consumer protection.
We fully believe in this project and that it fills a big gap in this market. There is no commercial use for cryptocurrencies without a 3rd party service mediator such as UTRUST. Traditional online payment systems rely on a consumer protection mechanism for mainstream adopt. The majority of people that pay with credit card/ PayPal/etc know that they can get the money back if their purchase is not fulfilled.
When it comes to crypto payments we (the cryptocurrency supporters) need a reliable service, a service that guarantees that both buyer and seller can do the transactions online with confidence.
Remember that when you are buying online you don’t know the other party. That’s why we need an independent and reliable mediator that protects customers from fraud and provides sellers the ability to sell more with less risk (as trust from the customer base generates even more sales and crypto-payments are safer to sellers).]
[The structure is unbelievably bad for early investors. If the token is issued immediately:
-Phase 1 already exists and can dump on Phase 2 holders at any time
-Phase 2 holders have an upper boundary of $.04/token and can be dumped on at any time
-Phase 3 has an upper boundary of $.05 and can be dumped on twice as hard, etc.
…
-If the bull market reverses at any point during the ICO (let’s say Phase 5) and a tranche is undersold, the people who bought during the .06 phase might wind up owning twice as much at .03 per, meaning everyone else is instantly dumped on 4 times as hard
If the token is not issued immediately, investors are locked into holding for months/years. Filecoin can do that. You’re not Filecoin.
This is one of the worst ICO formats I’ve seen yet. If it’s not reworked, I will avoid it.]
[Many projects with the same concept, but this project is very interesting, especially at low cost, it will be a very good promotional material, I’m interested in this project, is there a bounty campaign dev?]
[Nice looking project anything particularly different about this project. Uniqueness?]
[Purchase protection is standard in traditional payment solutions (PayPal and others) and is taken for granted by buyers online.
Unfortunately blockchain-based payment solutions do not guarantee buyers with any protection.
UTRUST is first cryptocurrency payment processor that provides buyers with a purchase protection mechanism. In essence, we provide buyers a refund guarantee if something goes wrong with the transaction.
Blockchain-based payments are the future and UTRUST is the missing link that will enable cryptocurrencies to go mainstream as a payment method.]
[To get in the android platform and iOS have to wait until next year April on 2018 I cannot wait to wait]
[It’s always good to have an alpha or some demo ready even before the ICO starts. Helps to gain some trust among the community.]
[They are working on the MVP. By then they will have merchants testing their product.
Please look at the roadmap - https://utrust.io/
Q3 2018 Client API, Wallet Web App / Check your balance & transactions / Integration with major eCommerce platforms
Q4 2018 Native apps iOS, Android / 200+ Merchants / Live Transactions
Q1 2019 Platform Refinements & Expansion / 1000+ Merchants / Progressive hiring of mediators.]
[And do you believe that? You agree to wait for more than a year of result which may be negative? UTRUST developers had to first develop a Test Platform API for Merchants and then spend ICO. Very high probability that they will fail.]
[Big congratulations to UTRUST project for successful pre-ICO only in 3 hours. An super easy for $1,500,000. ]
[I like the idea of such project, it was about the time to have something like UTRUST but I don’t know how the adoption could work considering Paypal took many years to be adopted worldwide. Another thing is about the staff members trying to help with the disputes, they will surely need to receive a salary, I wonder if you already have everyone or are you going to hire people when you are in the business ready for work?]
[UTRUST is not interesting to anyone. The team has no real product. Understand what they offer to sponsor an effort to develop a platform that is doomed to failure. A very dubious project. I do not recommend anyone to participate in it.]
[Who is this stupid badmouthing SONM go and check the price today and check there alpha this is one of the solid project out in the crypto world. You must be a Monetha supporter. I have invested a lot in Monetha and the price is only dropping it will be similar to Bancor just over hyped. UTRUST is going to beat Monetha that’s probably your real worry. Please don’t FUD if you don’t understand the project. And we don’t really need super famous people to make a crypto base payment platform. I want to remind you Vitalik Buterin was only bitcoin magazine contributor who write articles for five bitcoin (about $3.50) before he created ETH. Please don’t under estimate and degrade new talent. ]
[You do not understand the rules of pricing in the market. Invest in a project that has nothing more than promises is much risk and less profitable than investing in those who already have a ready platform. I’m sure that your disappointment will be great after UTRUST starts trading on the exchanges.]
