This article was written by Ken Leaver who comes from a product & commercial background. He has founded multiple companies and held senior product positions at SEA tech companies like Lazada and Pomelo Fashion.
Now Ken runs his own agency that helps early stage startups with content and traction called End Game.
Guest Author: Ken Leaver
I had the pleasure of interviewing Bjoern, earlier this week. Bjoern is one of the cofounders of Roadslip.com, which combines the world of fintech with crypto and then overlays it all with a bit of Thailand flair.
So what is the problem that Roadslip is solving for?
Think of Roadslip as kind of like Promptpay, but for the world. Bjoern actually got the idea for his startup after falling in love with using Promptpay here in Thailand.
And found himself asking “why isn’t there something like this everywhere?”
What is great about Promptpay?
- It is very fast and easy to use for consumers. Pretty much every bank in Thailand has it installed in their online banking.
- It is very cheap and easy to use for merchants. Pretty much every merchants out there at any size accepts it. Why? Well because it is free for them to use.
- It is safe and secure for everyone involved.
Now think about the traditional payment networks like Visa. And note that I worked at Visa Inc. for several years a little over a decade back so I know a thing or two about them.
Payment networks like Visa are free and easy for consumers to use. You take out your Visa card and then as long as the merchant has a terminal… you pay for it pretty quickly.
But it still requires a few steps that typically include either entering a pin code or signing a receipt.
Plus the merchant is also paying 2-3% of the price on the check for this service. That money gets split between a triangle of parties that include the acquiring bank (who is servicing the merchant), the issuing bank (ie. the cardholder’s bank) and the payment network (Visa).
And everyone has costs involved so they all wanna be paid.
What is the Roadslip Solution?
Roadslip wants to create a Promptpay-like solution that doesn’t cost anyone anything. As the user you just pull out your phone, scan a QR code, and it’s paid! With no fees to you.
As the merchant you also get this money on. your account without any fees!
But if no fees than how does the startup make money? Well that is where some basic advertising comes into play.
Basically the small transaction fee is covered by an advertiser who in return gets displayed on the payslip. Imagine paying for a coffee and then on the payment confirmation screen on your phone it says… “Your transaction was sponsored by Agoda!”
And so you’ll get a warm, fuzzy feeling about Agoda for chipping in and essentially ‘gifting’ you the transaction for free. 🙂
What is interesting about their approach?
So I found a few things interesting about what they are doing… first of which is how they are using crypto to make the transaction fees as small as possible.
Roadslip works with Stablecoins, which you can either top-up in the app or transfer to your wallet. Stablecoins have a direct relationship to popular currencies like the US Dollar. So for example 1 USD = 1 USDC (Stablecoin USD).
This way your balance does not fluctuate. And this is one of the main weak points of using things like Bitcoin as a currency for everyday transactions. Bitcoin is highly unstable. If it drops a lot the night before.. you may not afford that coffee in the morning.
Also, a Bitcoin is worth roughly $65k USD. So do you really want to pay like 0.000078 Bitcoin for your coffee?
That would be a bit irritating no?
I also really liked this desire to make the transaction free for the merchant… and instead having advertisers essentially sponsor the fees. I haven’t seen this done at scale before.. but that is not to say it cannot be done.
Where are they at in their journey?
Right now it is Bjoern, his cofounder Janine, and a couple of developers who are building Roadslip.com.
The backstory is that a long time ago someone told Bjoern about Bitcoin and he was fascinated by it. Since then he has pretty much always loved crypto and been a member of various communities related to it.
Then the idea for this startup came soon after they came to Thailand and they were exposed to Promptpay.
At about the same time there was a hackathon starting so they they decided to enter it with the idea and try to build it. This hackathon is still going on now and ends on April 8th.
If you’re interested in joining Bjoern and the team…. please reach out to him on X: https://twitter.com/UseRoadslip
