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Our mission: to make cash transfers free for everyone in the world.
BC: How did you get involved with remittance applications and blockchain technology?
KG: While I was doing my management I was traveling and meeting people all around the world and also used the western union sometime, and always amazed why companies charged so much giving money for money I lose every time 10-12%, and it makes me bit annoyed to think people making bread make less money than the money changers who literally just exploit the contact and without processing anything they make a huge money.
This was also the time when I get contact with a lot of traders who are trading bitcoins and cryptocurrencies and get involved in bitcoin and blockchain. You can say these were the days in 2014 when my mind was collecting the data from my own experiences.
I also use quite often TransferWise, and I thought that it’s a great idea to lower the huge bank’s fees when transferring money from bank to bank. However I realized that the cash to cash market segment is also huge, it is worth at least $300 billion every year, but it is still poorly serviced, and people are paying crazy service fees, and exchange rate fees and technology is not helping out at all. Therefore I created a team, and we started studying how to make the cash to cash market more efficient using the blockchain technology in a way that is mutually beneficial for both cash senders and receivers and cryptocurrency traders. Then we started building up Cashaa.
Redman: Your service says P2P cash transfer and exchange powered by blockchain. What blockchain is used for this service?
KG: Cashaa is technology neutral. We are working on inter-ledger where each individual need will be served by the platform without making it complicated. Users just need to know what they want. The value driver for Cashaa’s cash senders is the daily volume of cryptocurrency transactions what would support our cash transfer deals. Clearly, at the moment and for the foreseeable future the twins blockchain – Bitcoin is by far the largest market for us and we are focusing on that.
Redman: How does your service offer a fee-free cash transfer?
KG: By matching the cash transfer requests with the live deals of the cryptocurrency traders Cashaa creates a virtuous ecosystem that makes the cryptocurrency cash trades more liquid and efficient, and therefore the cash transfers benefit from that. It is indeed the cash sender that starts the process on Cashaa by setting exactly the amount he wants to transfer in his local currency and the amount he wants to be delivered in recipient’s local currency. The cryptocurrency trader’s just match requests based on their own convenience. It is also important to factor in that cryptocurrencies have quite different prices in different zones of the World in the same moments. Basically, we exploit this characteristic for the benefit of the cash senders.
Clearly at the moment and for the foreseeable future the twins Blockchain – Bitcoin is by far the largest market for us and we are focusing on that.
Redman: How is your platform good for traders?
KG: Also for traders the benefit is huge. Instead of trading only with other cryptocurrency traders like them, Cashaa opens the door to them to the huge market of cash senders, and this means more trading opportunities, a more liquid market and therefore higher possibilities of profits.
We give them an opportunity to trade them on their own terms outside their local market in cash. We also make the entire process smooth to them due to which our traders have experienced that they are now able to complete more deals than before.
Redman: Can you explain to our readers how your service works with no bank account, no credit card services, and does not require a mobile wallet?
KG: Cashaa obviously works on any device, smartphone, tablet, laptop, etc. Cash senders just need to register and confirm their mobile phone and email address. It’s as simple as opening a new Gmail account for instance. They are not required to know anything about wallets, bitcoin, the blockchain, or other cryptocurrencies.
Then they post their requests, in Cashaa’s form, for instance: “I want to send 500 GBP cash from London, and I want that INR 45,000 in cash is delivered in Delhi”. Cashaa transforms this request in a cryptocurrency trade deal available at the same time to traders in London and Delhi. Once the match is found, the trader in London takes the cash from the cash sender in exchange for a unique passcode generated by Cashaa and the trader in Delhi delivers the cash to the cash receiver and receives another unique passcode generated by Cashaa.
Meanwhile, Cashaa works as escrow deposit of cryptocurrency for both traders. Therefore the trader in Delhi is able to receive the bitcoins he has purchased, or another cryptocurrency, in his wallet safely and immediately. Please note that the cryptocurrency traders register and confirm their email and mobile phone, exactly like the cash senders. In addition to that traders can register on Cashaa any wallet they already have in order to receive the bitcoins when they are purchasing.
Redman: Do you think you can disrupt the current remittance market?
KG: Cashaa is revolutionary in its working mechanism, it relies on a peer-to-peer network, therefore no banks and no credit cards are involved, and it can save huge money lost in fees for the cash senders. At Cashaa we want to make cash transfers free for everyone in the world and not necessarily cross border but also cash transfers within the same Country. Traditional remittance market is so huge and at the same time so poor in terms of technological progress that we believe Cashaa can start taking its own piece and leverage on that to change completely its fundamentals.
It’s as simple as opening a new Gmail account for instance. They are not required to know anything about wallets, bitcoin, the blockchain, or other cryptocurrencies.
Redman: Can you tell our readers about the Cashaa market?
KG: The worldwide remittance market is worth $600 billion annually and the cash to cash segment is worth a huge $300 billion annually. On top of that, there are the cash transfers made not necessarily for remittance purposes but from city to city which of the same Country which are also a huge segment. All these cash transfers are charged by traditional services on average between 5%-10% and in some case also up to 20%. This is simply crazy in the 21st century and not acceptable anymore. At Cashaa we eliminate completely all the infrastructure costs that somehow are blamed to justify these huge fees.
Redman: What is the overall mission of Cashaa?
KG: Our mission: to make cash transfers free for everyone in the world.
Thank you, Kumar, for speaking with us and giving our readers details about your application.