Announcing Beans: A blockchain-based app that handles cross-currency payments

Beans will offer simple, free international money transfers (and healthy-yield savings accounts) to users around the world

Beans App

Published:

Apr 5, 2022

If you’ve been in the blockchain community long enough, you probably remember the cynical claim that blockchain was “just a solution looking for a problem.” Today, most people recognize the many applications for blockchain technology, but crypto still isn’t widely used for making payments. I’d been looking to pay people with crypto for years, but there were just too many hurdles.

My name is Wouter , I joined forces with some talented designers and developers to create a platform called Beans, hoping to change all that.

What is Beans? Beans is an app that gives anyone, anywhere in the world, access to free payments and a healthy-yield savings option — all through a simple, straightforward interface.

Solving cross-border payment challenges

International payments have always been slow, expensive, and complicated. Sending money across borders traditionally comes with hefty transaction fees (7–20%) and takes at least 3–5 to business days to post. On top of that, nearly two billion people across the globe don’t have access to formal banking at all, exposing them to risk of theft and even higher exchange fees when they use non-traditional money-changing options.

Today’s world is also fraught with high inflation and low-interest rates, so people in places like Argentina are looking for ways to convert their volatile national currency into something more stable. Unfortunately, national banks do everything they can to prevent this, imposing massive fees as a deterrent.

Blockchain to the rescue?

Blockchain is a perfect solution to these problems. It cuts out the middleman, making transactions faster, cheaper, and fully secure. Of course, this begs the question: why haven’t we seen significant adoption of blockchain for payments and money transfers?

Root causes for low adoption

There are several reasons behind blockchain’s low adoption as a payment system, both for domestic and international payments.

Everyday people find blockchain solutions confusing: Crypto enthusiasts like me can be quick to forget that, for most people just trying to get by, the current solutions come with long, error-prone private keys, backup phrases, and difficult wording. If you’ve ever walked your parents through downloading a PDF, you know that the average user won’t put up with too much complexity.

High transaction fees: Most blockchain transaction fees are no joke, so it doesn’t always make financial sense to use blockchain solutions for smaller transactions.

Limited interoperability with fiat currencies: Paying someone for coffee with Bitcoin is hard when that someone doesn’t want to receive Bitcoin.

What my team and I realized is that any viable solution for using blockchain as a cross-currency payment system had to answer these challenges. That’s why we created Beans.

Beans lets you move money freely (across any currency)

Beans is a blockchain-based payment and savings app that’s intuitive, 100% free, and provides a savings account option with a healthy yield. When we built beans, we focused on the following elements.

Ease-of-use

In Beans, there are no private keys, no seed phrases, and no difficult blockchain-related wording. Even our moms can use Beans (and they love it!). We’ve abstracted away everything blockchain-related, but don’t worry — we still remain non-custodial, giving users the best of both worlds.

Zero transactions fees

Beans opens blockchain for domestic and cross-border transactions by eliminating transaction fees.

Hassle-free deposits and withdrawals

Beans’ straightforward interface makes it easy to select the currency you want to use for payments. You can then deposit through your local banking system or via cash through Moneygram. Any payment you make, receive, or request will use this currency. That way, Beans will always know which currency you prefer.

And when it comes time to withdraw funds? You can send the money to any local bank or even convert it directly to cash, which you can pick up at a Moneygram location.

Easy send, swap, and request

When you start a transaction with someone who wants to receive a different currency, the app will automatically show a conversion dialog box that displays the best quote, with zero fees attached. That way, you can seamlessly pay your friend in U.S. Dollars, while they receive Argentine Pesos, Bitcoin, Lumens, or any other currency they prefer.

When you’re ready to request money from a friend, just enter the amount and create a payment link or QR code. When your friend starts the payment, the app will know whether a conversion is required. Your friend just needs to accept the conversion quote and the transaction goes through in seconds.

Savings in any currency (with a healthy yield)

Open a savings account in any currency of your choice. For example, if you’re living in Argentina, you can deposit funds, make payments, and receive payments in Argentine Pesos, while dropping U.S. Dollars into your Beans savings account.

Conversions between accounts are free and almost instantaneous. You can even earn a healthy yield on your savings.

Beans uses the highly-efficient Stellar blockchain

Beans is based on the Stellar blockchain, which is ideally suited to transactions. Our non-custodial platform is easy to use and lets you reap all the rewards that blockchain has to offer — like fast and low-cost transactions, high throughput, an on-chain swap mechanism, and interoperability with fiat.

And unlike other blockchain solutions? We’re focused on the general public.

Want to try beans? Sign up for our private beta.

In the coming months, we will launch our private beta, rolling out Beans for those who sign onto our waitlist. Sign up today, pre-claim your username, and be the first to experience Beans.