There are a number of cryptocurrency fans in Malaysia, but alas, with it not being a norm yet, they may find they lack avenues to spend it on.
Noting this gap in the market, Arravind Prabu, Vimal Selvamany, and Dhivager Rathakrishnan decided to create a crypto merchandise and commerce store, Cryptobilis in December 2020. Through it, crypto users could practice paying via the currency.
“There is a term in the crypto space called crypto whales, which are high net worth crypto holders. Cryptobilis teases the majority who are at opposite end of the scale, hence the term ‘cryptobilis’ (ikan bilis) was coined,” Arravind and Vimal shared with Vulcan Post.
Using A Crypto Payment Gateway Developed Themselves
Cryptobilis is actually under their umbrella company, Fetch International, which Arravind and Vimal co-founded in 2019. Fetch is an 11-person team that created their own crypto payment gateway, crypto gift cards, crypto wallets, and now this merch store.
“Fetch’s aim is to help consumers and businesses use and participate in the growing ecosystem of applications powered by cryptocurrencies,” they shared.
Currently, you can purchase their merch with normal currencies or cryptocurrencies. For normal currencies, they’re working with SenangPay and Billplz whereas for cryptocurrencies, they’re using their in-house developed payment gateway, Fetchpay.
On their site, some of their merch you can buy include crypto themed caps, tees, clocks, art, pillows, mugs, stickers, table pads, and more. They also sell crypto-related books on their site.
Their merch is priced quite affordably, in my opinion. The prices for products like apparel, art, pillows, etc. range from RM30 to RM80.
They’ve also recently become an authorised reseller of Ledger SAS, which is a global crypto hardware wallet company.
For those who are unfamiliar with crypto hardware wallets, they’re basically cryptocurrency wallets that store your crypto assets with an extra layer of protection from phishing sites, cyber attacks, and malware.
30% Of Their Transactions Come From Crypto
The process of integrating their crypto payment gateway was fairly straightforward since the system was built in-house.
On the backend, all their payments are routed to a liquidity provider for immediate processing.
Dictionary Time: A liquidity provider is a market broker or institution which behaves as a market maker in a chosen asset class. They buy and sell a particular asset at certain prices and can influence price stability as well as improve liquidity to make it safer.
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“As of now, we leverage on the liquidity of LUNO exchange to convert all payments back to MYR instantly to reduce our exposure on volatility,” they shared.
At the moment, Cryptobilis only accepts 4 of the major cryptocurrencies, which are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and XRP.
“Almost 30% of our purchases are made using crypto. The majority of our payments are made via Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum,” they shared.
Over the past 3 months, they’ve had a growth of almost 10% MoM for crypto payments and managed to make RM30K in sales so far. They’re anticipating this figure to quadruple in the next 6 months.
“As we continuously grow our brand awareness and reach, we predict that these numbers may increase by introducing new payment tokens which make better payments like Stellar, Bitcoin Cash, and BNB from time to time,” they added.
They’re currently working towards enabling over 40 cryptocurrency payments in their own system including Stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency whose value is tied to an outside asset, like our Ringgit or gold, to stabilise the price.
Advice For Merchants Who Want To Take On Crypto Payments
“We believe that cryptocurrencies are the future of payments, but we’d advise interested merchants to first understand the risk associated with accepting cryptocurrencies as payments, like security, custody, volatility, and liquidity.”
“They should also engage with industry experts prior to implementing any crypto payment system,” Arravind and Vimal advised.
Although their platform is more for small crypto players, Cryptobilis plans to introduce a new line of products to target crypto whales.
As they’re still at the infancy stage of their business, their main challenge is mostly increasing brand awareness and reach in a still-niche and unfamiliar industry in the country.
- You can learn more about Cryptobilis here.
- You can read more fintech-related articles we’ve written here.
Featured Image Credit: Arravind Prabu and Vimal Selvamany, co-founders of Cryptobilis
