1. Why Do Merchants and Consumers Want More Functionality from Online and Mobile Banking?

Issue: Consumers don't just want to review their balances and deposit checks through online and banking apps, they also need to make daily purchases to merchants. Trouble is, wallet functionality is hard for the bank to build in house with network effects and scale that truly benefits the consumer.

Our Approach & Impact: VMents is creating a new kind of online and mobile banking ecosystem. We use our patent pending Enterprise Digital Banking Platform and Ecosystem of banks and financial services clients and partners to provide an extension to online and mobile banking apps which banks and other financial services can whitelabel. Our banking and wallet app extension provides unique functionality including:

  • offline CommunityVcash transactions which can auto sync online when connected

  • peer to peer consumer to consumer to consumer and to merchant payment rails

  • merchant services for purchases as well as human ATM cash in and cash out

  • KYC information already known to the banks need not be registered in order to activate the Vments CommunityVcash app extension.

2. How Can Unbanked Consumers Have Access to Vments Digital CommunityVCash?

Issue: Unbanked customers don’t just want to use cash! They want “digital cash” which can be used locally as well as denominated in a currency they can send to family and friends back home.

Our Approach & Impact: Vments CommunityVcash  can be exchanged through appropriately licensed alternative financial services agent networks. Unbanked  consumers can use our white-labeled apps  to exchange CommunityVcash from online and in-store merchant agent locations quickly and easily. This digital cash in the local currency can be used to purchase goods and services at participating local merchants which can accept it free of merchant services fees and be able to reuse it immediately just like cash. Most commonly this functionality is paired with  discounts to encourage consumers to adopt the functionality over card payments.  CommunityVcash purchased in a “back home” currency through a licensed money transfer agent location can be transferred to friends and family who can use it or exchange it for their local currrency.

3. What’s Wrong with Cash?

Issue: Cash isn’t perfect. Cash can easily be stolen, damaged, misplaced, lost, or inconvenient. It’s also inconvenient for merchants during peak times. It also lack visibility of what it was used for. It pass around viruses and other bacteria. It can be laundered, but that is illegal.

Our Approach & Impact: We’re betting that our CommunityVcash will become more attractive to merchants and consumers! It cannot be stolen as it is biometrically protected through access to the app and on every transaction approval. If lost or otherwise, it can be recovered.  Since all transaction details for use of CommunityVcash is digitally recorded in Vments Smart Transactions, it provides a permanent and secure audit trail of where and what it was specifically used for in merchant transaction details.  CommunityVcash is clean “digital cash” that can’t spread disease and is fully compliant with anti-money laundering regulations.

4. How Does CommunityVCash Match Up Against PayPal, Zelle, and Other Peer-to-Peer Payment Solutions?

Issue: While PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, ChasePay, and others  are a great for some, they are a poor fit for the under-banked. When transferring funds in and out of PayPal and Venmo through other than bank accounts, or want to be done instantly, they charge huge fees. For banked consumers, Zelle and Chasepay work through limited bank networks and currently can only be used for person to person transfers. These all require being online to use and do not capture permanent immutable records with details. All transactions are limited to a single payout party. None of these do anything to help banks and financial services transition off of their centralized aging and fraud prone legacy systems.

Our Approach & Impact: Our service provides peer to peer INSTANT payments that can be used online as as well offline  without any Wifi or cellular connection. Our patent pending technology allows you to store CommunityVcash and transfer it from your computer, tablet, and mobile device with merchants, billers, family, friends, and others. Through online and in-store agent merchant locations and through other mobile card wallet app extensions, even those without bank accounts can use CommunityVcash. Vments is an enterprise platform and ecosystem open to all banks and financial services to participate in its distributed ledger network that keeps permanent immutable records with optional line item level details of what was paid for along with optional attachments for each transaction. It supports split tender as well as multi-party payouts, such as for taxes, tips, commissions, etc… We provide our clients and partners a roadmap to transition off of their current legacy systems to Banking Into The Future.

5. Why Cryptocurrencies and Stablecoins Are Not a Good Option for Banking and Payments?

Issue: One must first separate Blockchain from Cryptocurrency as just one way of using Blockchain. Cryptocurrency has it’s place in some specific utility use cases; but it’s exchange rate volatility, un-backed, un-regulated, and scalability issues are a poor fit for online and mobile payment solutions.  The power consumption required for mining crypto is a huge ecological issue as well. Stablecoins have started to address volatility and and some are backed by reserves somewhere, but these still involve crypto and are not a perfect solution. Smart Contracts which are immutable blocks of code that must execute on all node of the network are also in-efficient and in-flexible.

Our Approach & Impact: Our Vments solution makes the most out of blockchain / distributed ledger technologies through a private network of fully regulated banks and financial services which hold reserves for Vments non-crypto virtual fiat money (VFM) which is purely a digital asset representation of a local currency. There is no separate currency exchange rate to balance to and banks and central authorities can still manage the process under appropriate regulations that were specifically designed to protect consumers.  Since CommunityVcash can be “minted” versus “mined” by a central bank or by a bank following applicable regulations, it is a much more scalable and ecological solution. Vments hybrid cloud+blockchain architecture provides scale and throughput needed for this type of volume. Our Smart Transactions are also more efficient and flexible compared to Smart Contracts which require forks when the immutable logic of the smart contract is found to have bugs or otherwise require upgrade. Private bank to bank solutions, such as Ripple, which is cryto related to its XRP, are not totally ubiquitous, interoperable, and affordable for all banks, financial services, and other Fintechs. Vments open and enterprise functional platform is designed to be all of this. Ripple, and other offerings like it, does not provide incumbents a roadmap for them to migrate off of their legacy systems and provide end use cases to transition and transform new customer banking and payment experiences. Vments provides a complete end to end platform that is open for all to participate in, extend, and customize. It levels the playing field for all size banks, financial services, Fintechs, and their banked and unbanked end customers.

6. How Is CommunityVCash Secure and Prevent the Double Spend Issue?  

Issue: Other online and mobile wallets which include card numbers and stored value on the device are at risk of being cloned and/or stolen. Stored value on a device can be backed up, restored, and attempted to be reused.

Our Approach & Impact: There are no card numbers that can be stolen and the stored value on the device is biometrically and/or pin secure.

When CommuntyVcash is downloaded to a device, it is not only kept in an encrypted format; it is also locked to a unique device id (e.g. ESN) which is encrypted into the tokens of value stored on the device. The app validates this unique device id matches the device that the funds are trying to be used from.

When someone attempts to back, restore, and reuse tokens on the same device, then as soon as either the sending or receiving party connects online, this is detected and the device id and owner are blacklisted. The blacklist is distributed to all CommunityVcash devices such that attempted transactions by anyone on this list is immediately detected and prevented. When the blacklisted device does eventually get online, the app on their phone will delete all funds on that device and shutdown the app from further use along with a notice of legal actions that the offender is subject to.

One other effective security control is in how the tokens on each device will know when they were last sync’ed online and they can only be used up through an expiration date before they need to be re-synced before they can be used.

Online CommunityVcash validates and transacts online in real time and keeps track of any of the cash that you downloaded to your mobile wallet.

7. What if Merchant or Customer Is Not Registered with One of the Participating Banks?

Issue: Nearly all other merchant person to person payment products and services require being registered under their private platform or through their limited participating banks. None of them seamlessly service customers registered through participating banks as well as unbanked and those registered with non-participating bank accounts.

Our Approach & Impact: Vments CommunityVcash can either be registered under one of the participating banks or through one of the fully compliant alternative financial services (AFS) partners. Merchants and consumers can upload CommunityVcash they receive directly to their participating bank account or have the funds sent to a non-participating bank account which they have to register on their profile through one of the AFS partners. CommunityVcash can also be reused, like cash, without having to upload it to any bank account. Consumers can use cash out services from an agent of an AFS versus having to upload it to any bank account.