Oobit Co-Founder Aims to 'Bridge the Gap Between Web3 and DeFi' to Traditional Payments

We are turning to UBI now a company that wants to make crypto payments more accessible with its new tap and pay feature. The tap and pay feature allows customers to pay at any point of sale that accept Visa or mastercard using funds directly from their UBI wallet. Joining us now to discuss is Uber chief operating officer and co-founder, Aaron Miller. Welcome to the show. Hey, great to be here. All right. Uh Paint a picture for us. How does this work? How is it different than using a crypto visa or crypto mastercard that we've seen so many of the exchanges launch in the past few years. So the Uber app operates directly on the NFC component, the near field communication component that's in the device in the mobile device. If it's Android native or I OS native where the user stays in crypto and does the actual point of sale. All the, all the user to do is basically um touch the actual point of sale with his mobile five while we enable the real time conversion um at the actual transaction. So I'll give you a quick example. Um imagine a user holding $100 worth of Bitcoin in his wallet and he's buying a coffee at Starbucks for five bucks. He touches the actual point of sale and we do the real time conversion of only $5 of his Bitcoin balance at real time. Just to follow up on that question though, just to even break it down even further. How is this different from just Visa and Mastercard? Right. Because I think one of the reasons why crypto payments haven't really taken off is that people don't really like, there's not a lot of pain points on the consumer end for just using a credit card, right? Like, so you know what, what is it that is, is for the average consumer who is not like really into crypto, what's better about this than just using a credit card? So I think we can all look at it at the point that from day one that Bitcoin uh started by Satoshi Nakamoto, there's been real, no, no way that you can actually pay with your Bitcoin. That's been more of a trading tool. And I think the fact is because there's real, no, there's not a real solution out there that enables you the option to pay with crypto. Um If it's a debit card that you need to top up or pre convert your crypto to fiat while you're not exposed to crypto anymore compared to solutions that you have out there where you need to integrate into the actual merchant uh have a physical point of sale for the merchant to accept crypto. And on that point, you have the entire market education that you need to provide to the actual merchants. Uh with Uber, you can basically just fund your wallet directly. With crypto. We operate in a centralized way so you can deposit, withdraw funds instantly and you can go out immediately and tap and pay with your balances. Um And I think the most interesting part here is our layer two that we're busy working on. We're working on our layer two which would enable crypto holders ability to connect with external wallets as well. Um So we basically bridge in the gap between web three and D five to traditional day to day payments um that you can connect your meta mask wallet or any external wallet that we will integrate and you can spend funds directly from your external wallet without topping up any debit card, any credit card, basically an open ecosystem with a similar flow to Apple pay experience or a real Apple pay experience just for crypto Erin. What crypto does this support? And I ask you that because the example you just gave was in Bitcoin, but do people actually want to spend their Bitcoin right now? It's pretty volatile. There could be tax implications. Um It just doesn't feel like if I'm going out to buy a $5 coffee, I would choose Bitcoin over my credit card as Emily was saying yes. So we expect most transactions to be in stable coins, obviously, although it depending on the trend in the market, it may also be Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Um But we believe the majority of the users may convert the profits from other cryptocurrencies into stable coins and new stable coins directly for payments. Um We do support 35 different currencies at the moment. Um while we enabling uh the top five currencies for payments uh as we go live, what kind of a demand are you seeing for this? Uh you know, prior to building it? Um I, I assume you, you, you, you had a sense that there was a significant demand. What, what kind of demand do you or indications you have that there is demand for it. Yeah. So from day one, I think back in 2017 when uh I started working in Uber, uh we've seen a demand in a way to spend your crypto and use your crypto. Uh doesn't have to be in a form of payment, but a easy way to use your crypto anywhere, anywhere. And I think we've all seen that with the different solutions of debit cards that have come up into the market. A lot of them have disappeared. A lot have had difficult difficulties in the market. Um But we, we really believe and based on research that we've done that there's a need to spend crypto or an easy way to spend it, especially with the mass adoption that's coming up over the the last few years, you mentioned stable coins there. What's the value prop for UBI as paypal gets into stable coins? As we see, Visa and Mastercard, I know we've spoken about them a lot during this segment also explore stable coin payments. How do you compete with these big financial players who have been in the market for much longer than any crypto company? So again, as I mentioned in the beginning, Uber is an open ecosystem. So we open to integrate with other ecosystems and maybe integration with an existing platform out there, a centralized or decentralized platform when we enable them to spend the crypto directly from there and not necessarily do a bank transfer into their account when they sell the crypto. Um and a seamless way and a simple way to spend your crypto. Um So we all know that there are are solutions of debit cards in the traditional market. There are solutions of debit cards and credit cards out there and people don't walk around with a plastic card in the pocket. They'd rather work, walk around with apple pay or Google pay and just tap and pay seamlessly. Um So in the same way, um we believe we'll see people in the market connecting their wallets, um different wallets, different uh centralized wallets uh to the Uber app, making the Uber app, the main gateway for crypto payments and I know you're launching in Europe and the UK first. Why there any plans to launch in the US? Yes. So we do have plans to launch in the US. Uh I will probably only come up by Q one of 24. We are launching in the EU first. Um just because the majority of our users up until now are from the uh from the EU. Um And we are uh headquartered in the EU eu as well. Um providing us the legal coverage by the regulators and the entire EU to operate. Um So it's kind of a soft launch in the EU uh following that we are moving into other markets if it's Latin Asia and as you mentioned, the US as well. All right, Erin, thank you very much for joining the show this morning. Thank you for having me. That was the chief operating officer and co-founder, Aaron Miller.