Coincards Year in Review: 2018

2018 was an exciting year for Coincards.ca!

We managed to grow immensely as a company and the offerings we provide, while significantly improving almost every aspect of our services.

We would like to take this opportunity, in these first few days of 2019, to reflect and summarize all the events from the past 12 months in a brief outline.

January 2018:

• Coincards.ca relaunched — Our newly revamped website for 2018 after a very successful bull run in late 2017. This rebuild was needed to ensure we were “future ready” and included the implementation of some of the first exciting changes of many for the year.
• BTCPay Integration — We are very proud of the fact that we were the first vendor to implement BTCPay into our store. We were supporters of BTCPay since the very beginning and provided key insights to their team which helped achieve many of the features which come standard today. We have always believed in the mantra “Not your keys, not your bitcoin” and BTCPay has been one of the most excellent tools in crypto to ensure this.
• Segwit Addresses — With BTCPay came our ability to accept Segwit-enabled deposit addresses. We have been prominent advocates of Segwit and Lightning Network, and we felt it was essential to be able to receive Segwit transactions in our relaunch to help with the fee backlog.
• Litecoin Integration (Native Support) — With late 2017, we saw fees skyrocket along with the volumes and price of BTC. Our clients asked for an alternative, quicker ways to pay. Only one week after our re-launch, we were able to integrate Litecoin as our first Altcoin payment option. To date, Litecoin still accounts for over 15% of all transactions made on Coincards.ca
• Real Time Exchange Rates — With the new site, came the ability to better present information about our services. The first improvement to our site layout was the real-time tickers of cryptocurrency exchange rates in the upper right-hand corner of the page. This change allowed us to present the most up-to-date pricing to our customers as they browse cards.

February 2018

• WigsforkidsBC Donation — In honour of #WorldCancerDay, Coincards.ca donated our profits from February 4th to a fantastic charity which aims to improve the quality of life for kids living with cancer.
• Partnership with QuadrigaCX — We launched our first official exchange partnership with QuadrigaCX, allowing Quadriga customers to directly exchange their CAD balances for gift cards through the Coincards platform.

April 2018

• Lightning Payments Enabled — We have continually been among the first retailers to enable next layer technologies and innovation into our platform. Among this, Lightning Network payments went live on Coincards.ca in April of 2018. We initially started with a $25 CAD cap which has since been raised to $100 CAD. We also allowed for $0.01 amounts to run through our node as a test service for those who wanted to be #reckless on the mainnet.
• Sponsored Coinfest Vancouver — For the last three years, Coincards.ca has been a proud sponsor of the week long event known as CoinFest. This year we had the honour of being on a “Merchant Adoption” panel to discuss payments via Bitcoin and Lightning Network.
• Cryptopricing on Individual Products — As part of our ongoing site improvements, we added dynamic crypto pricing to each product which allowed for real-time updating.
• Vendor Website Links to Products — Website listings to all of our vendors were also added in April 2018. This small change improved our site by eliminating the guesswork to specific brands and helped our customers discover new products they had never heard of before.
• Added SMS, Whatsapp and Signal — We love to be readily available for our customers. To achieve this we opted to add SMS, Whatsapp and Signal messaging services to our platform, allowing us to keep even more open lines of communication for quicker issue resolution.

May 2018

• Dogecoin Integration — Wow, Such Crypto, Much Moon! Who doesn’t love Dogecoin? With our love for the Shibe and Dogecon Vancouver on the horizon, we decided to accept Dogecoin natively in May of 2018. Although Dogecoin only accounts for a small percentage of our dollar value, it does account for a large number of our transactions. Dogecoin is the altcoin of choice for small, fast and secure transactions!
• Confirmations Reduced from 6 to 2 — Fueled by customer feedback we had received, we were able to successfully reduce the number of confirmations required from 6 down to 2, cutting almost 40 minutes off our delivery times.

June 2018

• Sponsored Dogecon Vancouver — Dogecon Vancouver was hosted by some of our close friends and longtime Vancouver Crypto Enthusiasts, so when we were given the opportunity to sponsor Dogecon, we jumped at it immediately! We had a great time at this unique and crazy celebration that included, but was not limited to, a DDP, meeting a ton of crypto-twitter personalities and a “State of the Doge” address (which could not have been any cooler!) We will definitely be at Dogecon 2020!

July 2018

• Official Partnerships Expand — With the exponential growth that Coincards has been seeing, we have dedicated a lot of time approaching many of Canada’s most prominent brands to form official partnerships. Fortunately, the Bullrun of 2018 piqued everyone’s interest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and allowed for serious conversations about adoption to now start more fluidly than ever before. In July we welcomed more Official Partners than ever before and began to really see a general acceptance that Bitcoin is here to stay and with it’s permanency comes opportunity in its future. These exciting new partnerships have allowed us to open new conversations and continue to grow the platform to where we could only have ever imagined!
• Sponsor Bitcoin Rodeo Calgary — Coincards was honoured to sponsor the inaugural Bitcoin Rodeo. We had such a great time with Bitcoin Maximalists from all over the globe converging in Calgary during the world famous Calgary Stampede!

August 2018

• Launched New Instant Delivery System — In early 2018 we had a vision and goal by year’s end to have the ability to deliver electronic gift cards immediately after payments had been confirmed on the blockchain. In August we successfully launched our new backend system which allowed us the ability to make this dream a reality, finally being able to deliver customers the speeds that have been asking for all along. Even better, the system allowed for INSTANT delivery when payments were sent on the Lightning Network, eliminating the need for confirmations on the blockchain.
• Increased Lightning Payments to $100 — Lightning Payments proved to be stable and growing in volume and interest. With this, we increased the amount spendable using lightning network payments to $100 per transaction. We increased our capacity, while also keeping the payments to a manageable level of risk.
• Dash Integration — Thanks to the work of their community, Dash was integrated into BTCPay in early August, allowing us to receive native Dash payments through our site.

September 2018

• Quick Delivery Greatly Expanded — We introduced a large number of new partners in September, allowing us to expand our Quick Delivery program to over 100+ Cards. This program is continuously improving and we are always adding new vendors!

December 2018

• No Fee Section Introduced — As our list of partners grew we aimed to be even better. In the months prior to December, we reached out to our partners in regards to them helping push adoption even further. Many of our partners answered the call and stepped up. This move allowed us to introduce our “No Fee” gift card selection on December 1st. This new section of our site was made possible by our partners and showed they have a real understanding of the value that crypto-consumers bring. We are now going to push even more of our partners to join our no-fee program until we are certain Canadians can fulfill all of their needs in 2019 with cryptocurrencies!
• Sponsor a Family for Christmas — Last but not least, in the spirit of the Holidays, our team at Coincards.ca felt it was important to give back in our Community. The holidays are meant to be a special time, and not being able to provide for your family is a heartache no one should have to experience. We made sure that wasn’t going to be an issue for a local family! We were humbled & thankful to deliver a beautiful & bountiful Christmas hamper to a local family this year and make their holidays merry and bright!

Our team continues to be very Bullish towards 2019 and have high hopes and lots of plans for the months to come! We are excited to be able to continue providing such an excellent service that people use on a daily basis, to customers who offer such positive feedback and love!

We wish everyone a prosperous 2019 and beyond!

Originally published at coincards.ca on January 3, 2019.