Bitcoin Press Release: SINGAPORE – Rate3 aims to create a new global e-commerce ecosystem that ties consumers, merchants, suppliers and other intermediaries together with a native cryptocurrency that facilitates all transactions efficiently, cheaply and quickly.
The cross-borders e-commerce payment space today is far from perfect. Firstly, transaction costs and time - especially for cross-border payments - are excessive and inefficient. Secondly, there is no fully transparent and tamper-free reputation systems to assess the trustworthiness of buyers and sellers.
Card fraud, which remains as a main concern for online retailers, is costing online retail merchants billions of dollars today and is expected to rise to US$31.7 billion by 2020. Lastly, there is selective and deliberate exclusion from our financial systems today. This is especially prevalent and obvious in Southeast Asia (SEA): 73% of the 600 million SEA residents have no formal access to financial institutions.
Rate3 wants to solve the three biggest problems in the current cross-borders payment space through the release of a new payment token, $RTE, that facilitates all transactions between all players in the e-commerce space efficiently, cheaply and quickly. Rate3 (RTE) will be built on the Stellar network, leveraging on its low transaction costs, fast transaction speeds and decentralised distributed exchange over common blockchain platforms like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Why Rate3?
First, using a single unified token of exchange (for instance, $RTE) eliminates costly transaction fees and unfavorable exchange rate conversion fees. In eradicating most intermediaries in the process, we make it up to 5 times cheaper and 1000 times faster for consumers and merchants to transfer and accept payments with Rate3.
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Second, every payment transaction facilitated by Rate3 network will be properly stored on the blockchain ledger and no one can tamper with these transaction ledgers. As a result, Rate3 is able to create a transparent and tamper-free reputation rating system to assess the trustworthiness of buyers and sellers. By decentralizing trust, consumer fraud is reduced and merchants are more beholden to provide the products or services as advertised and in good condition.
Third, Rate3 enable cashback process to be seamless, instant and verified- a truly disruptive method in the e-commerce landscape today. Transactions facilitated on the Rate3 network are processed quickly by leveraging on the merits of Stellar network – this allows merchants to instantly verify a purchase with no risk of chargeback or fraud and pass on the cashback savings through third party affiliate players to consumers. With seamless, instant and easy cashback process, incentivizing consumers for their online purchases will be easier for merchants.
Jake Goh, CEO of Rate3 also explains:
“The inefficiencies in our current financial institutions are unnecessary and should have long been a relic of the past. The Rate3 ecosystem will serve those currently disenfranchised by the financial systems in SEA. We aim to create a globally portable and inclusive credit profile, thus reducing the need for opaque credit scores and unnecessary documentation required for credit applications.”
By building on the transactions recorded in the blockchain ledgers, introducing new identity attesters, consolidating new data sets such as mobile top-ups or remittance transactions and even peer scoring, we can extend necessary credit to more participants in SEA. This is where Rate3 helps traditional lenders issue credit for our token users: an end to end protocol eventually to serve billions of people.
The team behind Rate3 is the same team that built two successful products in the payments space within a year. RateX is a desktop browser extension that helps consumers pay the mid-market exchange rates while making online purchases. They have partnered with e-commerce giants Amazon and Taobao and facilitated purchases amounting to millions in GMV. RateS, is their mobile app built to cater to the increasingly mobile consumers in SEA.
After receiving the support of various institutional funds and angel investors based on the two previous successful products, Rate3 will launch its token sale in March 2018. For more information, please visit their official website and official telegram group.
