Nowadays, most online users have a PayPal account which they use to buy things. Their platform seems easy and transparent and users appreciate their buyer protection. However, things are much worse for vendors. Unless you are a big business, PayPal charges hefty fees and might limit your account, withhold your money or do other bad things. Also, users can file fraudulent chargebacks, especially when you are selling digital items, as you are not covered by their seller protection. Let’s see why Utrust could solve this problem.
The Solution?
“UTRUST is a revolutionary payment platform that enables buyers to use their favorite cryptocurrency in order to pay sellers (private or merchants). We provide sellers with the safety and convenience of receiving funds in fiat currency, and offer the best consumer-protection to buyers, by acting as trusted mediators. We combine the best payment protection features of current generation fiat systems with the innovative features of blockchain while blending in the unique features provided by our own token.”
So basically, Utrust is a combination (with some major improvements) of Bitpay and PayPal. They use Cryptopayments, while still offering Buyer Protection for clients. Sells will be paid in fiat currencies, protecting them from price volatility.
How does the buyer protection work?
The reason why Bitpay, Coinpayments, etc. cannot offer buyer protection is that crypto transactions cant be refunded that easily, especially if they have already been converted into a fiat currency (or the seller refuses). How will Utrust address this problem? Utrust will be implementing a dynamic escrow period. This means that the buyer’s funds will be held for up to 21 days. This waiting period decreases as your performance as a seller increases.
Comparison to PayPal
On their website, Utrust is providing a comparison between themselves, PayPal and Bitpay. Here it is:
Obviously, judging by this comparison Utrust is the ultimate payment solution and will dominate the world by 2016 (joke). On a serious note, let’s have a more critical look at it:
Lower buyer risk
Personally, I don’t think that PayPal is that bad regarding consumer protection. Utrust claims that PayPal only cover physical items in the Buyer Protection, which is not true. Buyers are covered for every product they buy, unless it violates ToS, is custom-made, has an engine or is industrial. PayPal is protecting their customers well, however, some sellers will surely disagree with me here. I believe that Utrust won’t be significantly better than PayPal in this case.
Fast payment approvals
Now to be fair, BitPay and Bitcoin, in general, cannot be classified as fast if you have to pay 5€ to get your transaction confirmed in a timely manner. PayPal transactions are confirmed almost instantly, unless they get flagged, which is a rare occurrence. I’m afraid that PayPal and other companies like Visa will always be somewhat faster, however they will never be able to eliminate fraudulent purchases. Utrust’s problem here is that its speed is confined to the used currencies one. Therefore, if users started using Altcoins to pay, Utrust would be able to confirm transactions much faster.
Low payment fees
Utrust and Bitpay charge a flat 1% fee to payments which is really low compared to PayPal charging (roughly) 0.5€ + ~3%
In regards to the currency exchange fees they did not mention any exact number, however, they claimed that it would be significantly lower than Bitpay’s and PayPal’s rate. They plan to lower this rate by connecting the buyer and seller to exchange providers.
Multiple cryptocurrencies accepted
Currently BitPay is only accepting Bitcoin, however, there are many alternatives that do accept other currencies – like Coinpayments. They also have low fees, seller ratings and safely stored funds, yet they do not offer dispute resolutions. I believe that Utrust is currently the only payment gateway to offer buyer protection with a crypto transaction.
Safely stored funds
On their whitepaper they said the following regarding the security of the funds:
“Our system is designed to take into account the recent events of wallet theft in ICO. This will be mitigated by circulating the currency between multiple addresses and converting a significant amount of the ICO to fiat currency when possible.”
Personally, I don’t think that converting funds into fiat will be enough to secure them properly. However, your funds are secured with your private keys, making them really safe. A somewhat similar company, Worldcore, is using Face/Voice recognition, giving users an account (they are able to manage it) instead of a wallet (the user is in full control). Click here for our Worldcore review
No chargebacks & Buyer protection
BitPay allows no chargebacks at all, due to the Bitcoins nature. However, PayPal will freeze a transaction if a buyer presses the “I didn’t buy that” button or is dissatisfied. Utrust will allow chargebacks if the customer is dissatisfied with the product, yet eliminates the fraudulent chargebacks where customers claim that the transaction was unauthorized.
Fast dispute resolutions
PayPal needs up to 30 days to make a decision, depending on the case. Utrust claims they are twice as fast. Of course, we are unable to verify that – this point should have no “value” as anyone can claim that they will be faster than the competition.
Seller ratings
Seller ratings as we know them are nothing new. We’ve had rating systems using 1-5 or 1-10 stars, 1-100% or other variations. Utrust, on the other hand, integrates this rating in a much better way, by decreasing hold times for seller with good ratings. This encourages sellers to perform well and should increase the customer’s confidence as their rating matter more than ever.
Decentralized tokens
The UTRUST Token will be Utrust’s native currency that can be used to pay with. In my opinion, this feels like “one of the last steps”. First users need to use their platform, then users might consider buying a currency that is confined to a payment gateway.
Fixed Comparison
Since Utrusts comparison chart is heavily biased, I took the time to “fix” it using my supreme skills in photoshop.
Conclusion
In their comparison, Utrust listed some alternative facts about their competitors to make themselves look better. Yet, I still believe that Utrust has a huge potential once the cryptocurrencies start becoming more mainstream. They bring something new to the table and the community has already shown great interest in their Pre-ICO rounds. Personally, I will be buying some tokens from their ICO!
We might release a comparison between Worldcore and Utrust. Should we do that? Or are there any other topics you would want us to cover? Please let us know!
Very cool man, but I can’t buy their ICO since I’m in the US. For some reason the SEC hates me….jk
i have heard a lot about government and countries making there own cypto ? and forcing people to use it ? as am sure this would support something like utrust ??? but no one knows how true this is ? and how far they are with this ?
LOL, that second comparison image is really “well” edited!
By the way, I’d really like to see the Steem review you talked about in the CAD post.
Im looking forward to it :)