Dear Telcoin community,
Like just about everyone else on Earth, we at Telcoin are happy to move on from 2020, and 2021 is off to an exciting start. We’ve submitted V2 of the Telcoin application to both the App Store and Play Store — fiat remittances are finally becoming a reality. More importantly, this milestone closes the book on our transitional period. From here forward, in addition to continuing to add fiat remittance corridors, we are all from a product standpoint working on efforts initiated by the new team — namely Telcoin V3.
It might sound odd to talk about V3 when we are just now launching V2, but when the new team took over, we sat down and asked ourselves, “where do we want to be in a year, and what is the best path to get there?” So while we are all excited about today’s release, it is from our perspective a necessary stepping stone to completing our grander Telcoin vision.
I want to thank everyone again for their patience during our difficult transition period. We are back to full strength as a company and are running on all cylinders, executing a clear and deliberate game plan for 2021. These are exciting times and Telcoin is well placed to play an important role in the emerging world of new finance.
Thank you all for your continued support.
Respectfully,
Paul Neuner
Telcoin V2 launch
Pending app store approvals, we are excited to announce that both iOS and Android versions of the Telcoin V2 mobile application will be released to the public in the coming days. A lot has been revamped “under the hood,” but there are two major aspects to the upgrade: (1) the addition of fiat payment rails and international remittances; and (2) the addition of identity verification for all users of the Telcoin application.
Initial fiat remittance corridor: Canada to Philippines
Canada is the first of four initial sending markets that Telcoin is entering for fiat remittances, followed by Singapore, Australia, and the USA. Our launch corridor, to the Philippines, will be immediately competitive by way of our direct connection partnership with GCash — the largest mobile money platform in the Philippines, with more than 33 million users.
Of course we understand that in order to successfully market a remittance service, we need to be able to serve a large number of destinations and cash-out methods. Now that the heavy-lifting is done in terms of getting this initial corridor working, we are confident we can quickly scale our remittance service globally and reiterate our projection that we will be able to catch up or exceed our roadmap targeted pace by mid-year.
The compliant path: Telcoin and KYC
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of venues for engaging with blockchain and digital assets anonymously. As one of our core goals is bringing these new technologies mainstream, we’re taking the path of compliance and are confident that this will allow Telcoin to scale faster. Telcoin V2 adds KYC (“know your customer”) verification to the app, thanks to a partnership with leading identity authentication platform Jumio.
Jumio’s AI-powered technology, which has been integrated into the Telcoin app, allows users around the world to simply upload a photo of their government-issued ID card and take a selfie to confirm their identity. KYC enables us to fulfill emerging regulatory requirements and is a major step in bringing compliant money transfers to users worldwide. This compliance-first strategy will allow us to quickly add smooth fiat payment rails globally, while we also expand digital asset capabilities in parallel. This is also critical to our plan to embrace the US market.
Current users who would not like to KYC with Telcoin are free to decline and withdraw TEL to an ERC20 address. Also note that “active beneficiary” as previously described (recipient using the Telcoin app to select their preferred destination for the remittance) is included in V2, but will not be in V2.0 as we want to make sure the various new elements are working properly in production, and that compliance systems are up and running properly, prior to turning this on. But now that Android is completely caught up with iOS, we are excited to turn this on very soon in the V2 release cycle.
A stepping stone . . .
The Telcoin V2 application is effectively two parallel services in one application. The existing multi-sig wallet is of course still there, and while it now supports multi-asset, we are still only allowing TEL tokens for now. The fiat remittance service has been added as a second firewalled service within the app. This separation, while admittedly somewhat awkward during this period, is very deliberate. In a number of markets we could immediately blend fiat and crypto worlds right now, but this would inhibit our ability to quickly scale our fiat payment rail options. By navigating a “stepping stone” phase that maintains two insulated tracks — fiat and crypto — we can stay fully compliant with our fiat-only partners and markets. We then anticipate being able to “flip a switch” selectively with partners and markets as soon as we are able to connect the two worlds in a fully compliant manner.
. . . to the Telcoin V3 vision
The next version of the Telcoin application, already well underway, will at a high level involve the convergence of the parallel fiat and crypto tracks incubated in V2. Without exposing too many details, this next version will provide a foundation for smooth and compliant payment rails into and out of multiple digital assets and decentralized financial services globally. International remittance will still be central to our offering, but corridor by corridor we plan to “flip the switch” to allow so much more — as soon as it is legally possible to do so in each market.
The TEL token and issuance
In this Telcoin V3 vision, the TEL token plays a very central role in a number of ways, including how we plan to interface with DeFi systems and incentivize our telecom partners to market our service to their subscribers. Our original vision for Telcoin still stands, and in today’s climate is more relevant than ever. Mobile networks globally are seeking a second chance with non-custodial financial services — what we are calling “Mobile Financial Services 2.0” or “MFS 2.0” in telecom parlance. With interest rates near zero for the foreseeable future, why would a telecom want to be custody to funds if that requires them to spin off the service as a separate bank? Telcoin, as realized in the V3 application, will provide this opportunity to mobile networks globally, with TEL issuance as the impetus to market entry.
When we originally pitched the Telcoin concept to mobile networks three years ago, we could easily get them excited. But in addition to the regulatory uncertainty of crypto at the time, mobile networks had a hard time figuring out where we could fit. Now, in addition to regulatory certainty crystalizing, the landscape in terms of telecom business structure is very different. Networks globally have restructured to introduce digital financial services departments aimed at non-custodial financial products — particularly in the developing markets where we are rolling out remittance services. A natural home for Telcoin within telecom bureaucracies is emerging.
Prior to the release of V3, all remaining non-circulating tokens will be either in the liquidity fund or set aside for issuance to mobile network operator partners — in a transparent and automated fashion. With V3 we are confident that we will finally have all of the pieces in place to make this original vision of Telcoin a reality, and will be able to scale exponentially as a result. The path to this original vision has ended up being a bit longer than anticipated, and issuance in the meantime has been temporarily deployed to bridge us to this vision in line with our whitepaper. We are very excited about the end result and the role the token will play in completing our vision from V3 onwards.
Other developments
There are a number of other developments to report, including a couple of new hires and a couple of new office openings, but we will hold these for a bit later as this new app version is a lot to communicate for now. We will also be moving the token genesis and liquidity wallets to a more secure and flexible system in preparation for some of the features of V3 and its surrounding TEL ecosystem. That transfer will take place very soon, but you can see the new addresses below ahead of time:
Telcoin Genesis Wallet
Current address: 0x8322c7e7c14b57ff85947f28381421692a1cf267
New address: 0x4eF3c56e7e012903bdaB5A90fFa6ab527006b291
Telcoin Liquidity Wallet
Current address: 0x467Bccd9d29f223BcE8043b84E8C8B282827790F
New address: 0x0Ae09EF609567904B483Ae74a2117d88A1b1D7d0
Finally, thank you again to everyone for bearing with us through difficult times over the past year, and with recent system disruptions leading up to the V2 launch. We’re grateful for your continued support.
Cheers to a healthy and successful year ahead,
The Telcoin Team
