TillBilly: Our approach to solving the cryptocurrency volatility problem

Volatility is a function of time, i.e the longer the time a free market cryptocurrency sits in a user’s wallet, less predictable becomes its price with respect to fiat. One way to achieve this would be to convert Fiat to cryptocurrency immediately before the purchase, But the challenge is that there is no instant (and cheap) mechanism to exchange Fiat currency for cryptocurrencies. If shoppers want to exchange their Fiat currency for crypto-tokens, they have to do it well in advance as it can take days via bank transfers or clearing houses to deposit Bitcoin into a shopper’s account. The process takes even more time and hops if the token is not traded for Fiat currency directly on exchanges The instant option is paying via a credit/debit card or via Cryptocurrency ATMs, but generally with this option the shopper gets a poor exchange rate as the high transaction processing fee is passed on to the shopper. To overcome this problem, we designed our unique Two Asset Model using the Stellar blockchain infrastructure For some context: TillBilly is a retail payments network on the Stellar blockchain infrastucture, coupled with our proprietary integrated point of sale terminal (hardware) for contactless Payments, Digital Receipts and Reward Points. The goal is to break into the monopolised intermediaries in the retail card processing space and provide merchants an ultra low fee alternative to accept payments, and share a part of that processing fee back with the shoppers. Our target audience are average users i.e everyday shoppers and merchants who do not understand, or at worse distrust digital currencies. Hence our focus is to abstract the complexities of acquiring and managing digital currencies, eliminate the fear of volatility (w.r.t fiat), and build a system that is as seamless and familiar to users as paying with a card or Apple Pay. More infomation on TillBilly.com TillBilly’s Two Asset Model Our two asset model offers a unique solution, where users can easily fund their wallets via low/no fee bank transfers in advance, and hold that credit without the risk of price volatility. We provide shoppers an easy way to trade their Fiat currency for a Fixed Value Credit (Fiat_Asset). This records the traded value on the distributed ledger for full transparency and auditability. The value of the Fiat_Asset does not fluctuate (e.g 100 USDC = USD 100) During a transaction at the point of sale, these Fiat_Assets are traded “just in time” by TillBilly for the equivalent BILLs required via the Stellar Distributed Exchange. By doing so, we secure the “transaction value” and the risk with volatility of BILLs is mitigated. TILLBILLY’S PAYMENT TRANSACTION MODEL — SIMPLIFIED OVERVIEW Think of it as if a shopper buys a “TillBilly Gift Card” worth for example 100 credits by paying $100 from within the app. These 100 credits are now stored in the shopper’s (stellar) account. Just like gift cards, these credits can be used at any participating store for buying goods and services. To make a payment, the shopper simply “taps” a registered NFC card or a phone on the TillBilly Terminal and enters the secret PIN. This authorises the transaction for the purchased value (e.g if purchase value = $100, 100 credits will be deducted from the account) Behind the scenes, these credits are used to purchase BILLs (TillBilly’s tokens) at the market rate via Stellar’s Distributed Exchange. These BILLs are then sent to TillBilly and in turn TillBilly deposits the settlement amount into the Merchant’s bank account. A part of the merchant’s transaction processing fee is shared with the shopper as reward credits that will be used to discount the next purchase, so in this example if the shopper had reward credits from a previous purchase, they for example will pay $99.5 instead of $100 At the end of the business day , TillBilly settles the end of day transaction amount, minus the fee in Fiat currency (e.g $99) into the Merchant’s bank account via bank transfer.