Instoken Payment Protocol

Instoken
2 min readOct 3, 2018

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Image by: Instoken, (2018). <https://instoken.io>

Payment is at the core of the provision of all services. It facilitates transactions between consumers and service providers listed on the Instance marketplace. Smart contracts on the Instoken marketplace are engines to fuss-free payments.

For each service engagement, both consumer and service provider are required to send Insta to activate the smart contract. Rules such as refunds for cancellations, time period to cancel before no refunds are issued and potential impact on reputation will be decided by Instoken’s artificial intelligence engine based on factors such as the consumer’s or service provider’s history and reputation. With these in place within the smart contract, both consumers and service providers will be able to transact freely and with peace of mind.

For example, a consumer pays for service from a service provider on the Instance App in Insta. If the service provider for some reason does not honor the deed specified on the respective commercial profile on the Instance App, the consumer will then report a complaint. Due to dishonoring the smart contract a dispute mechanism is triggered and whatever Instoken paid to the service provider will be returned into the smart contract and to be temporarily held until resolved.

This method is safer than paying for services with cash due to the fact that cash is a physical form of currency that can be stolen. The issue behind this is that, if the service requires direct physical interaction between both transactional parties, there is an uncertainty for safety whether the service provider would physically harm the consumer for cash or take the cash and not provide the service at all.

Another scenario is that the traditional form of cash payment may directly affect the work of service providers. Cash can be paid for services, however if the provision of service does not live up to standards agreed upon, the service provider may be reluctant to give consumers the refund. Whereas in the use of Insta and smart contracts, the consumer would file a report and if eligible, will be refunded depending on the arbitrators. Due to this feature, service providers are incentivized to provide up-to-standard service and honor the smart contract. This benefits both the consumer and service provider: Consumers pay for what their money’s worth and service providers have a reputation conscience and benchmark for quality control.

Find out more at the official instance website http://instoken.io

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