Transcript of AMA with CEO of PointPay

Dear PointPay family,

PointPay CEO Vladimir Kardapoltsev answered the most popular questions from our community. He covered various topics, from listing PXP token on our platform to future development plans and the latest news!

Below is a summary of the AMA held on the 27th of October, 2022.

AMA Transcript

Vladimir (CEO): Hello, PointPay family. Alina is with me today. She's helping me with your questions, so I hope this is going to be an exciting AMA session.

Alina (Host): Hello, everyone! We're excited to be here. Let's get started with the latest news and announcements from Vlad.

Vladimir (CEO): We're ending the first month of the last quarter with some awesome updates. Our 22nd token burn has taken place. This time we have burned 2.7 million PXP!

I’m excited to share with you some of the great things we've been able to accomplish during the last month. Let's take a look at what each department has been up to lately.

Let's see what we've accomplished by departments in the last month.

The interfaces of the various services received important changes. As for the website interface, we have

Implemented the B2B account's back end from registration to KYB processing. Implemented the front end of the B2B account, in particular, a new registration flow, different menu interface, and terms and conditions).
Initiated global password reset and conducted security investigation to adopt the best practices in 2FA protection.
Optimized CrowdIn to have enough capacity to add new texts and translations.
Implemented UI Kit as a stand-alone package that covers all the products and significantly improves development.
Added logging in terms of user authentication to enhance security.
Implemented KYC fix based on the logging investigation, so we have a complete sync between the balances and the authentication projects regarding the records transmitted. This means users will have a smoother flow when passing KYC and making a transaction.
Improved multiple aspects based on user feedback in regards to the: fees display, mobile version menu, outdated videos on the landline page, white screen appearance, notifications, pop-ups, preview banner update, FAQ updates, language detection, referral program improvements (rewards format and new user flow).

For our mobile apps:

We have released version 7.8.0 for iOS and 6.5.0 for Android. The new versions included the P2P service;
Added a new Pitbull token (PIT) to the mobile apps. Furthermore, we've added a modal and text about the additional fee for the Pitbull (PIT) token in the "Send By Wallet" and "Receive At Address" flow so that users see a notification about the additional fee.
Improved scaling of charts in the Exchange flow;
Improved the Edit Profile flow so that the users do not have problems uploading or deleting a profile avatar.

Withdrawals gain a few changes:

We have improved the Deposit operations. All deposits are processed in less than 3 minutes after a successful scan and confirmation from Custodians/Blockchain.
We have improved the Withdrawal operations. After verifying withdrawals, the technical processing time takes less than a minute. Initial validation of user findings and funds can take time.
Improved the transparency of all operations on user balances. This allows us to check and process user requests to customer support quickly.
Launched a new Pitbull token, which allows our users to make deposits, withdrawals, and trade the token on the exchange.

Exchange has been updated with a bunch of new changes:

This month, our development team launched the payment of exchange commissions in PXP.
We have also updated the design of placing orders, including new ones, to make it more convenient for our clients.
We redesigned the transaction and order pages to display complete order information.
We made changes to the market data and candles to increase work speed.
The exchange team completed the development of the Trading API on the part of the exchange, which will become the basis for the public API.
Finally, the PointPay team added the PIT token to the exchange so that the token community could trade it on the PointPay platform.

As for the PointPay CryptoBank:

We have implemented the first stage of the B2B direction, which includes deposits and withdrawals. Now accounts in the PointPay ecosystem can be registered to a legal entity. Shortly, an API will become available for B2B clients to perform operations automatically. Further, the number and functionality of services will increase.
We improved the quality of Staking and implemented monitoring, allowing us to control the correctness of the creation and return operations and immediately take action if problems arise.
As for the newly added PIT currency, we have enabled deposits, withdrawals, Savings accounts, gift cards, and invoices.
During the last month, we have simplified the user flow, in particular:
Deposit methods. Previously, if the user did not have enough funds to complete the transaction, we offered only a purchase. Depending on the currency and the operation being performed, purchases, deposits, cryptoloans, and transfers from a Savings account are available. Now operations open in a modal window without going to a separate page.
The equivalent of the amount in the user's currency. We implemented the calculation of the equivalent in the user's fiat currency in places where previously there was only the equivalent in USD.
Select currencies from recent transactions. In the account summary, we withdrew currencies from the latest transactions, allowing you to find the right one in one click.
Replaced Transfer with Savings. In this way, we've made the CryptoBank menu more convenient: we removed all Savings accounts and organized the transfer in the window.
Replaced the library for mathematical operations. We have replaced the calculation library in all services, which allowed us to increase the accuracy of calculations and avoid problems with the user's flow due to errors.
We added marketing blocks to CryptoBank services to draw users' attention to our advantages and increase conversion.

In addition to working on interfaces, we also worked on the development of our new products.

As for the P2P platform, we made some updates:

Developed a page for adding and managing payment methods by the administrator. This will allow us to add various new payment method options within 10-15 minutes. We've also started adding new payment methods.
Added push notifications for the user about important events in P2P.
Added Google metrics to all important user actions.
Improved the product interface and simplified some actions by adding fields for currency search.
Implemented the 2FA integration for contract confirmation so that funds cannot be transferred without entering a code.
We created a concept and started working on a Telegram bot. The bot will allow you to connect your PointPay account to telegrams and receive notifications about new contracts or information about the user. In the future, it will be possible to make P2P transactions through the bot.

The following new features were released for the Launchboard:

We have created a new logic for buying ICO project tokens, adding the ability to buy them for various cryptocurrencies.
We added different voting options that can be selected in the admin panel. This will allow us to adjust the voting for the project flexibly. For example, now we can set whether the project will have a staking stage and the subsequent payment of project tokens in the form of a reward or not.
Updated the voting interface, making it simpler and more understandable.
Conducted a successful vote for the listing of the PitBull project, collecting 114% of the planned votes.
Added Google metrics to all important user actions.

We have improved the HR Talent Platform with a couple of changes:

We have completed work on a desktop application, allowing you to track time in hourly contracts and receive money based on hours worked. The application takes screenshots and sends them to the web client. Currently, it is unavailable to users because the work on the hourly contracts is still underway.
Completed work on the backend for hourly contracts. We prepared tracking settings, automatic payments and counting hours, storage, and auto-deletion of screenshots in the contract.
Reworked the mechanism of invites into contracts. Now 2 different mechanisms are available: invite directly and via messenger. In addition, a separate function appeared - chat through messenger, which made the flow of concluding a contract more understandable.
For our HR Talent platform, we have also added Google metrics to all important user actions.
Developed the concept of multi-level monetization of the product with user levels. We made a plan for the transition in several stages and began work. This will allow you to use the product more flexibly, paying only for the required functionality.

Our Legal department has made great strides:

Completed legal & business compliance with Circle.com: signed an Agreement; technical implementation is in progress.
We are in the last stage of compliance with payment processing provider Unlimint. The seamless integration will be started as soon as compliance is approved.
One of our biggest updates is the listing of the Pointpay Exchange on the Coinmarketcap website.
Passed Crypto.com compliance and created a corporate account.
Issued new Privacy Policy for Pointpay.
Our legal team conducted the IEO of the Pitbull project.
We have submitted a personal application to NMLS - WY MTL license - USA. We are now processing a corporate application.
Provided technical teams with the technical requirements of various regulators worldwide.

All right, everybody. Thank you both for sharing wonderful news with us today. Let's move on to our first question.

Alina (Host): When do you plan to list PXP on your exchange? You said in the past that if we are listed on the Tier-1 exchange at the end of summer, you will add the token to the PointPay exchange.

Vladimir (CEO): Thank you for the question. First of all, we're still committed to the Tier-1 listing. We are working very closely with three of the Tier-1 exchanges at the moment.

We are in advanced talks, and I can't promise anything because it's not dependent upon us. They send us certain lists, and it's quite complex. But despite the bearish market, we have a very good chance of getting listed on the Tier-1 exchange. PXP is performing rather well, is if we look at the overall trends when the market is going down.

Secondly, it is true that a year ago, it was quite difficult to buy and sell our token when we'd just completed our ICO. Now, I don't see any restrictions for the trading; you can transfer your PXPs to any other exchange since it's listed on

Six centralized exchanges:

Bittrex
Bitrue
Whitebit
Bit Global
CoinTiger
Solidbid
And one decentralized - Uniswap.

You have more than enough ways of trading your PXPs. I don't think it's a big problem for our investors because transferring money out of PointPay is easy. And then you can trade it there.

Currently, we have quite a good chance of getting a listing on the Tier-1 exchange. I think we will hold it off for now in order not to spook the Tier-1 exchange. It's literally a week's work. For us as a business, Tier-1 is more important. You are able to transfer PXP out of the platform and trade them on the open market. I don't see any big reasons for us to list PXP on PointPay at the moment because listing on a tier-1 exchange is a lot more important.

Alina (Host): Wonderful; thank you so much for answering that question. And we're gonna move on to the next one. There were several questions regarding withdrawals, so I have combined them into one. Could you please share when automatic withdrawals will be enabled?

Vladimir (CEO): As I've mentioned before, during the updates, the automatic withdrawals are available for users who joined the platform this year because we didn't have any problems with the old system there.

Withdrawal problems are mainly experienced by the users who joined the company. Before the ICO, many of the old users don't have transaction hashes. That's due to legacy and database problems. Sometimes it's mainly due to the way that the old team collected the information. And because of that, we kind of have to do a lot of investigative work.

But new users wouldn't experience any issues. When we eventually invite a lot more users into our platform, they won't have any problems because for them the automatic withdrawals will work.

The process might take up to 48 hours to withdraw a large sum of money. And for small transactions, it's within 24 hours for the older users and may remind you that you have to pass your KYC. Without the KYC, you won't be able to make a withdrawal.

Also, we tried to make our system more secure. Essentially, if one user has one large transaction, we do all of the background work on that user; when the user makes the second transaction, we don't have to do all of that background work again. The transaction will go through quickly.

Only the large ticket holders experience those problems; only a few people experience those problems. But it does happen. I admit it. That's because we are trying to improve our platform.

Alina (Host): Awesome. Thanks. Moving on to our questions, there are two of them. I'm going to read two of them right away because it's within the same category:

How will the new listing on the CMC affect your business?
And now that PointPay listed as an exchange on CoinMarketCap, which is CMC? Can we expect AI ICOs on the Launchpad?

Vladimir (CEO): Well, let me start again by saying that it was incredibly hard to get listed on the CoinMarketCap because we had to meet all of the requirements. I remember back in the day because I've been working this through for quite a long time, listing on the CoinMarketCap. It is done like that (clicks hus fingers); just email the APIs to the relevant project manager; they used to have ten people working for them.

Still, then they changed the requirements to change the way that they scored the projects. They concentrated a lot more because there were a lot of scams within the industry; they concentrated more on the legal aspects as well and now became this kind of almost like a listing on the conventional. We had to meet quite a lot of requirements to include so many different bits within your API.

They do a lot of scoring as well. It's the world's most reference price tracking website for the cryptocurrencies like Moody's or the S&P. People do really look at it a lot closer.

It's an important indicator of the project's success because they take a lot of things into account, like the trading volume, the number of trading pairs, and the volume for each trading pair. For example, if you have zero, or negligible trading on certain pairs, they would be discounted. Factors like credit score, the number of subscribers on social media, and the number of engagements on social media.

That's things to do a KYC there, and the company had to send all of their documents. It was a very long process; they took it very seriously. But it makes it easier to avoid scams. That was the change that they made about two years ago.

Returning back to the questions - the absence of our exchange on the CoinMarketCap really hindered our ability to attract reputable projects onto our Launchpad. Most projects need the CoinMarketCap kind of verifications; they know it’s a kind of industry tick mark, saying that your project is legit and good.

And if, for example, it's a token, it has to be listed on at least two exchanges on the CoinMarketCap to verify your trading volume. So, if your exchanges are listed on Solidbit, which is not listed on CoinMarketCap, that volume will not be considered.

Now, when projects are coming to us to list their tokens on our exchange, the volume on PointPay will count towards the overall volume of that token. That's a great thing as well. And that's why it is quite important. All ties into one thing, I hope.

As I mentioned before, we are working incredibly hard on getting listed on Coin Gecko, our legal team is working hard, and we'll probably be done by the end of the month or year for sure. Because if we are listed on the number one ranking exchange and not listed on the number two, it's a bit weird. We will probably have some more leverage with them.

Alina (Host): It's a great achievement, and you should talk about it if you want to.

Vladimir (CEO): Well, when I got an email from CoinMarketCap, I literally jumped and screamed, saying “yes!” because that was a great achievement.

Alina (Host): Yes, definitely. You deserve all the breaks.

Okay, moving on. Next question, When will different deposit networks be implemented in the PointPay ecosystem?

Vladimir (CEO): Great question. I know that it is quite important for our users not to overpay the Commission; certain networks are more expensive, certain are cheaper, certain networks are more congested, the way that you pay for the Commissions, etc. And we are at the moment working on adding the newer networks into our ecosystem.

I can't say when it will be added for sure. It could be added by the end of next month or will most certainly be added by the end of the year. It's not down to us. It's down to the custodians. And it's down to the way that our system works.

But, most certainly, by the end of the year, we're now working on adding, obviously, the two most popular coins that we have, the USDT and USDC. For USDT, where I think, at the moment, we have a Tether, and for the USDC, we will be adding the ERC 20 and the BEP 20 as well. We will have a drop-down menu where you will be able to select the network that you want to use.

I know it's not hard to implement. We're trying to implement it as soon as possible. Most certainly, by the end of the year, we're working incredibly hard on achieving those.

Alina (Host): Okay, cool. Thank you. And the next question is kind of a combination of a few questions that we had or asked the most by the community. And it goes as: will the currently reduced interest rates for PXP staking and savings rise again in the future?

Vladimir (CEO): Okay, at the moment, we are not planning to increase the rates. I know that we've decreased them in the summer as most companies that are similar to us.

First, there is a period of global economic recession, and all economies are shrinking. There was a crypto winter, which is still going on. The crypto went down for two months before we reevaluated our business and business operations and changed our rates. It was thought long and hard, but we needed to stay afloat. We need to develop our project, despite the economic instability. And we need to make sure that we are economically viable. If that means that we have to reduce the rates, we have to do so. That's what happens.

We had very high rates at the beginning; we reduced the rates halfway through, we reduced the rates further, and we're still in the market for the rates. Looking at the examples of other companies, they do similar works in terms of crypto banking and kind of crypto deposits as well; for example, Celsius comes to mind; they went bankrupt because their rates were too high, and they weren't able to go on. It was a massive pyramid scheme.

The way that we work is a lot different. We have liquidity. The way that we reinvest that money. We don't want to get bankrupt. We don't want our one product to drag all of the products down with us.

Secondly, our main goal now is to reach the breakeven point as soon as possible, and we look at how we spend our money. Once our products gently start generating enough profit, we will be able to make such changes, but at the moment, it's yet to happen. Sorry, I have to be economically responsible. And have to ensure that we're not going to have a bank run on all of our services. That's why our rates are what they are.

Once we start generating money from other services, we will consider increasing them in the future, looking obviously comparing them to the market rates in comparable businesses.

Alina (Host): All right, awesome. Thank you. And the next question goes as: I know it's a lot of work. But why don't you implement new services such as crypto indexes, stock indexes, ETFs, shares, and metals?

Vladimir (CEO): Great idea. And it is planned for the end of 2023 beginning of 2024. It's in our big global roadmap, the kind of services that we're planning to complete. But as of yet, I don't think it is economically feasible; it's not as popular.

At the moment, I think we have to complete our ecosystem. And we have to make every single product within our ecosystem perfect and then move on to newer projects because otherwise, we will be trying to complete everything at once and not getting every single product right.

We will have to complete the ecosystem first and start making money from those. And obviously, then we will expand onto those we are planning to complete first of all. In terms of the new products that we're planning to, it's like margin trading, options, trading, futures trading, it's a big enough task to complete those. And then we will probably move on to the ETFs and the metals and what you mentioned, stocks and indices and stuff like that.

Obviously, we'll also be introducing advanced order types and, advanced features, advanced trading interfaces. We'll be improving our trading interface as well. As I mentioned before, we've introduced certain, as of yet, advanced trading orders, like the Fill-or-Kill, the Good-till-Date, iceberg orders, etc. We're planning to make a good trading product and then add those new services when we will fit in when we realize that we have a business there, but as of yet, I don't think it's the moment is not economically feasible. We'll first have to complete all of the products that we have.

Alina (Host): Got it. Thanks. And moving on to the next question. Since the international banking license was removed from this year's roadmap, it would be nice to have some updates on how things are progressing. And when we can expect the license to be obtained. Which quarter of 2023?

Vladimir (CEO): Well, PointPay's already authorized as the operator of the virtual deposit currencies. I can't remember the exact wording in Lithuania. And this pretty much allows us to serve all of the European clients legally.

We're trying to obtain a similar license in the US, where there are only a few companies that operate illegally, and pretty much those two licenses, the Lithuanian license, and the US license, will cover the whole world.

For us, we're already able to make the SEPA transfers; as I said before, we entered integrating with the ACH as well, which covers everything; for example, big companies, like Revolute, don't have the banking license yet. They've applied for a couple but they can operate all of their banking businesses with just the same license that we have in Lithuania. I don't think it is economically feasible at the moment.

We've realized that we can operate legally even within heavily regulated markets like the EU and the US without those things, and pretty much if we are able to operate within the EU and the US, that covers the whole world. But yes, in the future the regulations will change, and we will consider getting the banking license elsewhere. We have worked on all of the things, but we kind of did a lot of legal analysis. And we've realized that it isn't necessary to operate legally in all those jurisdictions and offer those banking services. Or maybe, in some cases, in America, we can offer reduced services without a license.

Alina (Host): Got it. Cool. And the next question is regarding mobile and the web. And I guess this is the question that's been asked a lot lately. And the question is, When will the website and mobile applications be functional?

Vladimir (CEO): Well, the website is fully functional and works flawlessly. I think the mobile apps are also fully functional as well.

I know that we had a couple of hiccups a few weeks ago with the app, but it works absolutely fine. It has all of the core functionality; of course, we will be improving the user experience in the user interface within App.

If you think about what the app looked like a year ago, it's like heaven on earth; the app was not existing; it only had the banking services functionality. And even that was a bit wonky. But now, it's pretty much all the services that we have on our platform are more or less offered on our mobile app.

We're planning to introduce all of the PointPay services on our mobile app by the end of this year. Afterward, we will be improving all of the trading interfaces and the staking interfaces. And all of the things that we have on our website will be available within our mobile app.

At the moment, you can stake tokens, trade, use crypto wallets, even watch the crypto school videos, use the Quick Exchange and gift cards, can withdraw and deposit money. I think most of the core functionality of our platform is there. We've just introduced B2B, which relates to financial services as well.

I don't think the HR and Escrow will be integrated within our mobile apps, because it's a slightly different focus. But yes, when we will integrate it, we can just further improve it in terms of the user interface.

Of course, as it's said before, if you have any examples that you want us to look at and improvement suggestions, drop us a text or use the bug report, and just fill it in there. The project managers will see it, and they might even reply to it.

Alina (Host): Wonderful, thank you. And the next question is whether interest payments were as follows for 18+ months, and now they seem to be broken every few weeks and are still broken as I typed this message. Why is this happening?

Vladimir (CEO): Well, as I mentioned before, that must have been written about a week ago. We have changed how we do our statistics within our system and improved all of the formulas and all the mathematical bits of our bank. And as we were transferring from the old system to the new system, there was a system glitch. I fully accept the mistake, and I fully accept the responsibility that people had the wrong display of their balances.

Nothing to worry about. Everybody was credited accordingly. Everybody received what they were due. There was no problem with that at the moment as of yet. We changed our system, and that's why it occurred for three days; people were getting slightly different displays. Still, we have moved on from the old system of calculating to the new system of calculating, and now it should be working absolutely fine. But yes, I'm truly sorry for the inconvenience and the worry that you might have had.

Alina (Host): Okay, cool. And then we have the last question here. And I guess then we could just wrap it up because we are within our time limit at this point.

And the last question is: Interest payments were flawless for 18+months, and now they seem to be broken every few weeks and are still broken as I type this message. Why is this happening?

Vladimir (CEO): Well, what can I say? We are a startup, and nobody is perfect. We had problems last year, but if you look at the whole picture, we have accomplished huge things this year; we've redesigned, pretty much reinvented our mobile app, introduced Escrow Launchboard, Launchpad, HR talent, P2P, stabilized the system, moved on to the unified balances system, reworked all of the interfaces, redid all of the designs of our business, we have accomplished great things.

Obviously, we had a bumpy road. We had a lot of hiccups along the way, which is absolutely true. And I admitted that it was quite worrying for some people when the services drop down or when some things are displaying incorrectly, but at the end of the day, we are trying to create a seamless and scalable system because the old system wasn't scalable.

At the moment, we have a great website, a great offering of products, and a fully scalable system which is incredibly important as well. There are a few issues that remain to be addressed, but I think we will be able to deal with them by the end of the year.

We are managing to grow pretty much. I think the PointPay performance and security are improving every single day, and we will continue to grow steadily next year. We had to experience a bit of pain at the beginning when we still don't have that many people within our platform. When new people come in, they will be able to experience a fully working and seamless product.

And you, as users are their early adopters of crypto and early adopters of PointPay; you're here to help us and to guide us through this process to help us iron out those things. If you see a problem, go and report it, it will be solved very quickly. I only apologize.

I think that is all; thank you all very much for joining me for the AMA session. Thank you, Alina, for collecting the questions and helping me answer them. I shall see you all tomorrow for the Friday weekly updates.

I'm sorry I couldn't do it in the last couple of weeks because I'm still traveling. And this video has been pre-recorded, as I'm mentioning it. Again, it was pre-recorded earlier today during lunchtime. It's only like a two-hour gap. We have experienced some problems with the connectivity, and the video was kind of jumpy, and it didn't record in the end. I thought for all of you to have a better experience, I would just record it slightly earlier, and you will have a better picture and most certainly get the video; thank you all very much.

Have a great weekend, and thank you for supporting our project!

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Transcript of AMA with CEO of PointPay – Vladimir Kardapoltsev