Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin, and thousands of altcoins that closely track the violent price fluctuations of these cryptocurrency leaders together make up more than a trillion dollars of value–$1,568,394,881,863 according to coinmarketcap.com as of this writing. It was more than $2 trillion just a couple of months ago, but less than one tenth of one percent of that only two years ago.
Behind all the growth and volatility of speculative markets, the arguably higher value economy is in payments for goods and services. When Alchemy Pay was founded in 2018, the cryptocurrency market was miniscule, but Alchemy Pay’s founders realized that decentralized, non-custodial exchange could be an answer to many problems in the fiat currency world. Moreover, Alchemy Pay saw an opportunity to help cryptocurrency holders trade their holdings for more than just other cryptocurrencies. The higher value economy would be created by the bridge between the crypto and fiat worlds.
Alchemy Pay entered the market to solve the difficulty of paying for goods and services with crypto, through enabling seamless conversion of cash into crypto, and converting crypto back to cash.
CEO John Tan said:
“Alchemy Pay’s founding team were assembled from leaders and technical specialists at payment gateway providers. The simple idea was to enable the same processes for cryptocurrencies that were business as usual for fiat currencies. But in addition to that, it was obvious that processes in the fiat world could benefit from the unique strengths of decentralized and indelible ledgers.”
With that vision, Alchemy Pay became the world’s first payment gateway solution provider to bridge the gap between fiat and crypto economies.
Tan said:
“Part of the volatility of the cryptocurrency markets is caused by the difficulty of trading it for goods and services. And the massive gap between fiat and crypto exacerbates the situation. For instance, in the payment space, merchants refuse to accept crypto due to price volatility or they don’t understand it. On the other hand, crypto investment and Defi services are mostly stuck within the smaller crypto economy and away from the rest of the fiat world.”
Alchemy Pay’s partnership with Binance and gateway provider QFPay proved the viability of a solution on a global scale. Binance shared Alchemy Pay’s vision to expand beyond currency exchange markets and elevate its native BNB token from a speculative store of value to a means of e-commerce trade. The e-commerce platform that completed the loop was Shopify.
Tan said:
“Shopify merchants served more than 200 million consumers in 2019. That was definitely an ideal platform to prove the concept, and even more so now with more than a million merchants and more than half a billion shoppers.”
The Alchemy Pay solution helps merchants, businesses, and developers accept crypto and fiat payments with one payment system. Only one payment terminal is needed for offline transactions, and only one API/Plugin to integrate for online payments.
Through Alchemy Pay, Shopify merchants from countries including the U.K., the U.S., Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and Hong Kong, can accept Binance’s native token, BNB, and its USD-backed stablecoin, BUSD, for payments.
Alchemy Pay similarly enables e-commerce trade for over ten other cryptocurrencies, including BTC, ETH, XEM and several stablecoins, of which some are issued by partners such as Huobi, Gemini, OKEx, NEM, DAOMaker, and others.
In addition to cryptocurrencies, the payment solution also accepts fiat options such as credit cards, Alipay, Wechat Pay, FPS, and more. Consumers shopping on client platforms using their PC browser can pay in digital currencies using any wallet of their choice, while shoppers on mobile apps and browsers pay via Alchemy Pay partner wallets.
Tan said:
“It’s more efficient to have one wide and strong bridge with a lot of lanes. Our online capabilities include working with developers for any specialized transaction purpose, such as online games or ticket services. And our offline payment systems work just as smoothly. Clients have options to transact with our payment app, which can be installed on any iOS and Android devices, or any mainstreamPOS systems.”
As Alchemy Pay expands its merchant networks, client tokens such as Binance’s BNB and BUSD or consumer holdings of BTC, ETH, etc., can be accepted in those networks as well. This includes Hong Kong’s Pricerite, Singapore’s Ce La Vi, Canadian footwear brand Aldo, multinational Arcadier SaaS, and Midwest Global Asia taxi services with its network of more than 2500 limousine drivers.
While this growing ecosystem enables numerous cryptocurrencies and tokens for clients, it is underpinned by Alchemy’s own ACH token, a supply-capped, smart contractible ERC-20 utility token that is required to access the ecosystem’s services and benefits. The token works to help those in the fiat world–be it consumers, businesses, financial institutions, etc. – directly use fiat to gain access to blockchain solutions. Instead of paying utility tokens, Alchemy – in the background – seamlessly facilitates the exchange of fiat into utility tokens to access services.
ACH tokens are staked, deposited, rewarded, paid as fees, and accumulated to drive and incentivize all of the ecosystem’s functions, such as crypto payments and investments, and directly connecting blockchain and DeFi solutions to the fiat world.
Alchemy’s ecosystem is expanding by geography and by segment, with announcements planned in the near term for partnerships with financial institutions in North America, Europe and Middle East. These partners will deploy Alchemy Pay solutions to launch crypto investment services for retail investors and high network clients. In addition, Alchemy Pay will soon launch a Visa debit card, which will be available via the company’s native wallet application.
Tan said:
“We started out seeing two worlds with no reliable way to travel between them. Now we’ve got a real bridge of utility between them, and we plan to keep adding utility to make it wider, stronger, and more stable, ultimately fulfilling our mission to drive crypto adoption.”