This AMA (Ask Me Anything) features Farhaan Dawood from FriiPay! ICYMI, we discussed the work he and his team are doing to revolutionize consumer loyalty, crypto payments, and digital couponing on the XRPL.
Check out the full recap below, and head to xrpldevs.com to join the community and tune in for the next AMA!
BiasGoose: Hey everyone! Join me in welcoming Farhaan Dawood to our AMA series on Discord! Farhaan is the founder of Frii Pay and is here to tell us more about his project. And congrats on being an XRPL Grants Wave 4 grantee too!
Farhaan please introduce yourself and the project please 🛠️
Farhaan: Hello everyone, I am the CEO and founder of Frii Pay, where our mission is to make the XRPL available at Point Of Sale for payments without using Visa and MasterCard.
We have partnered with the XRPL Labs team and will be connecting the Xumm app to existing POS.
BiasGoose: That's great to hear! Farhaan I know you have an extensive background in this industry, could you tell us more about that?
Farhaan: I started in the POS space 21 years ago, and was fortunate to be on the first Visa Chip and Pin roll out in the UK as an independent. I have continued to bring POS solutions for Visa and MasterCard and in 2021 we were one of the first companies to send Visa transactions from a smart terminal running Android. My mission has always been to connect as many products and services as possible to a single POS device. To that end we have delivered Prepaid mobile, Prepaid Music including iTunes & Spotify, Amazon, Xbox, Playstation, Uber and the list goes on.
BiasGoose: Awesome! I know FriiWorld does many things but could you explain to us what you are building and generally how things are going?
Farhaan: Yes we are currently integrating the XPRL into traditional mainstream POS. Once the POS device is connected we will be able to use digital wallets like Xumm to process any cryptocurrencies held on a XUMM wallet. We are also creating a mechanism where retailers and brands will be able to push digital coupons that will be visible in the XUMM wallet and will be validated using POS applications and the ledger. This strategy will allow us to bring non-crypto consumers into our world.
BiasGoose: A question from the community - What are some of the challenges you see in bringing XRP and QR crypto payments to a mainstream audience, and how do you plan to overcome these challenges?
Farhaan: This is always the hardest part of the problem, getting retailers and consumers to use the services. We have created a few strategies around this. Our loyalty product gives consumers free cryptocurrency for spending in the normal way, to enable people who want to explore crypto without having any risk. The coupon product is another way to get consumers to engage without even explaining that the mechanism is powered by the blockchain. If you get a free coffee or ice cream do you really care how the coupon is processed? Last of all we are doing our best to make crypto payments free for retailers to process, vs. them paying processing fees to Visa and Mastercard.
BiasGoose: That is a massive competitive advantage for you! Free or cheap transactions for retailers to me are the most untapped potential of crypto. Now onto my favorite questions, why did you choose the XRPL? And if you can, tell us more about the partnership with Xumm?
Farhaan: That was easy, the XRPL was originally built to process payment transactions, it has all the necessary components, is fast and cost effective—to mention a few. We were introduced to the XPRL Labs team as they are also working on providing a solution for retailers. Once both teams realized that together our solutions will be better and will come to market faster we created this partnership, especially as they had no experience in delivering POS and we had never built a crypto wallet. The POS and the crypto wallet need to be created as one. What I am seeing is that people are trying to connect things that were never meant to connect, so this is a big differentiator for us. Especially working with Wietse the CEO at XRPL Labs, he is truly amazing.
BiasGoose: Truly a match of skills and experiences! One more from the community - How do you plan to collaborate with existing players in the retail and payments industry, such as banks and payment processors, to ensure the success of Frii Pay?
Farhaan: That is something that I have already done for other providers like iTunes, Amazon, etc. As we are already delivering applications for Visa & Mastercard our POS solutions are pre-approved. Existing players are actually looking for new ways to recruit retailers and where they can earn from other transactions rather than depending on Visa and Mastercard. Giving them a competitive advantage and new revenue stream for no cost doesn't take much convincing. I am also blessed that having successfully delivered for them over the last 20 years has made me someone that they trust.
BiasGoose: That's great! I know you have some great metrics on your POS reach in the UK, could you share that with us?
Farhaan: The UK has already installed over 300,000 smart POS terminals in the last 24 months and our application can work on all of them. This includes Verifone, which is the largest terminal manufacturer in the world and has more than 30 million POS terminals deployed at any one time.
BiasGoose: That's amazing! Farhaan it was a pleasure to have you join us today! Do you have any final words for our community or resources to share if they want to find you?
Farhaan: Yes, very soon you will begin to see what we have been discussing actually being released into retailers to help transform and digitize the POS space. Thanks for all your time and support and I look forward to hanging out with you guys again soon!
To learn more about FriiPay please follow https://twitter.com/FriiWorld.
To catch upcoming AMAs, join the XRP Ledger developers discord.
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