Building strong roots so we can conquer the year
ELLY.COM Q1 Overview
From the beginning of 2022, we set a goal to grow our team in the right way so that we can have the most excellent team possible, standing behind a product that we all believe is one of the best on the market.
In the first two months of this quarter, we focused on:
- developing a strong sales and support team,
- performing a test sales project to gather all of the necessary market information,
- and to plan our strategy.
As we approach the finish line, a lot of labor done behind closed doors yields excellent results. All of the legal documentation and procedures for on-boarding the merchants on the new markets were completed. We were able to get everything in order, educate our sales and support force both internally and locally on the targeted market, and begin the first genuine sales phase in early March. We acquired and on-boarded many new merchants in just a few weeks and are conversing with more than 1500 leads generated with our sales campaign. A reliable UK local support team provided unmatched support to the merchants when needed.
Alongside growing our team, we were in the process of understanding the market and using the data we got to improve our product. The following were the two primary outcomes of this process:
- In addition to reversing, we added the ability to refund transactions to merchants.
- We upgraded Elly POS, which can now function as a stand-alone terminal or as part of an EPOS system (either on the Elly POS terminal itself or external hardware).
We opted to integrate Alipay, WeChat Pay, and Laybuy (BNPL solution) to enable as many different payment ways as possible so that merchants can cater to a wide range of customers. We added a few more features that facilitate merchants’ businesses and help them scale quickly. This way, we improved our product and helped our customers improve their business.
On the other hand, our flagship product, GoCrypto, was not overlooked. We focus on developing new features and creating a more user-friendly solution with our Elly Dashboard. Advanced filtering, exports, and statistics are just a few of the features we have upgraded for the merchants to improve their overview and ease the accounting. Most significantly, we introduced a brand-new strategy to assist those in need.
As you may be aware, the primary worldwide news story of the first quarter of this year was the conflict in Ukraine. In less than two weeks, our staff worked tirelessly to adapt our GoCrypto system to meet market demands, making our solution for instant crypto payments wholly free and available to all merchants in Ukraine. We don’t consider this a sales effort. Therefore, we won’t discuss figures; we simply wanted to help individuals in need, so we invested our time, skills, and technology to create something useful.
In GoCrypto 2.0 and our favorite token GoC, we concentrated on building a strong team and community. We understood that the process would not be as straightforward as anticipated, so we worked hard to recruit the best CTO available to get things moving in the right direction.
In addition, we wanted to encourage and reward our wonderful community, so we have begun with regular airdrops, which will continue to be our routine practice in the future.
Our accomplishments
Elly POS
- The entire structure is set up and ready for UK market growth from a legal, sales, and technical perspective.
- Our new team has generated more than 1500 leads in the UK and has already started closing them. In the last month, we on-boarded and set up 13 new Elly POS clients and aspire to at least triple the number in the next month.
- One of our key goals is to allow customers to select their preferred payment method. As a result, we added more payment methods to our Elly POS system. Alipay, WeChat, and Laybuy were all successfully added. More BNPL payment choices and Open banking as a payment method with lower fees for retailers will be added soon.
- We optimised the payment flow to allow the Merchant to process as many transactions as feasible.
- The support team’s average response time was reduced to 12 minutes for complicated and critical issues.
- We are in the process of merging the Elly POS and GoCrypto Dashboards into the unified Elly Manager. Meanwhile, we’ve consolidated the analytical data available to merchants and increased filtering and export options to make merchants’ jobs easier.
- Ensured an efficient feedback loop with our clients and sales team to constantly improve our products..
- We have started working with multiple EPOS systems that will provide an even more holistic experience for the merchant. We have already signed 2 EPOS providers in the UK market. These integrations (multiple in the process) will allow us to start working with product and supply data alongside the current payment data.
- We have grown our team — additional members in support, marketing, product, finance, and sales departments.
- We have established external legal partnerships and advisors in the UK, USA, the Caribbean, Slovenia, and several EU countries.
- In Romania, this quarter brought us 7 new EPOS integration and distribution contracts were signed.
- We’ve created a payment system for the e-commerce sector that enables seamless card, crypto, and digital payments while maintaining a uniform and simple user flow. Online crypto payments have now become simple and pleasant, requiring no in-depth crypto understanding on the part of the consumer or the seller. We currently support Card payments, Crypto payments, Alipay, WeChat Pay, mBills, Valù, and Lauybuy, with more services coming soon. The solution will be marketed in Q2.
GoCrypto achievements
- Setup GoC/TANGO 2x yield farm on TangoSwap smartBCH DEX
- Setup GoC/BCH yield farm on MistSwap smartBCH DEX
- Setup GoC/BCH yield farm on BenSwap smartBCH DEX
- Setup GoC/BCH yield farm on EmberSwap smartBCH DEX
- Integrated crypto.com Price Bot for GoC Token into the main Telegram channel
- Upgraded join.gocrypto.com can be used by Ukrainian merchants to apply for GoCrypto for free with 0 fees +
- We upgraded our webPOS and eCommerce systems so that Ukrainian businesses could use them in both their brick-and-mortar and online stores
- Upgrade of the Payment processor for decentralised payment network GoCrypto 2.0
- We started regular Airdrops to reward our community for loyalty
- Our GoCrypto network is growing every day, with more than 2500 locations in 32 countries
- GoC smartBCH started trading on SmartSwap — a smartBCH DEX aggregator
- We applied for crypto-asset business with the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK
Team updates
Software development team
In Q1 2022, many things changed inside the software development and technology operations teams. With Aleš Perme joining the team, our goals have become clearer and more logical. We increased our internal team and strengthened the operation with the software development company Evolt. Finally, things started to move onto the vital long-term planning, where we now separate our goals into four pillars:
- strategic (long term),
- operational (improvements and features),
- integration (integrations with cashiers, e-commerce platforms, acquirers, value-added services, alternative payment methods…),
- urgent matter development (connected to upgrades and everything needed to be done urgently / connected to our business dev or sales team/customers).
The team has also on-boarded new members, especially on the DevOps side, mobile development, and backend development.
Regardless of the departmental and process change work, we have successfully integrated and launched the “Buy now, pay later” payment method into Elly POS and the Elly POS Cashback program for merchants in the UK market, which is showing a stable weekly volume increase. Elly POS was enriched with the digital payment methods Alipay and WeChat, which were launched. We are in the final leg of development and preparing for the launch of Elly Manager 2.0 with advanced payment analytical data for merchants.
eCommerce, which was launched as well, and Elly POS finally share the same set of payment methods that range from crypto, cards, and digital payments.
We have formed and on-boarded a core of highly specialised Crypto development team members for developing GoCrypto 2.0. During this time, we delivered smartBCH DEX GoC Yield Farms & Pools and entered the Payment Processor’s final development leg.
Marketing team
Marketing had a significant coworker’s growth in the design and content department. We managed to align ourselves quite quickly. In cooperation with the sales and product team, we launched three campaigns for our merchants in the UK oriented on our main product benefits, fees, strong support team, and new payment options added to the system.
We launched a Ukrainian initiative campaign with 0 fees for all UA merchants.
Within the last month of actively campaigning in the UK market, we got 50 website leads.
We also started regular airdrops for our GOC community.
The marketing team applied for two awards and is planning to start campaigns with GP and EPOS, into which GoCrypto is already integrated to convince their merchants to activate it.
Our social statistics is as follows:
Twitter 14,6K (growth of 46%)
Facebook 149,827 members (growth of 28%)
LinkedIn 2195 followers (growth of 43%)
Telegram 2643 members
Crunchbase status 2,817
Legal team
We submitted the application for crypto asset business with the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK. We created more than 50 documents and drafted close to 1,000 pages of required demanding legal and business text.
We have established external legal partnerships and advisors in the UK, USA, the Caribbean, Slovenia, and several EU countries to be agile and compliant on the global market.
A new reputable banking partner has been partnered to provide additional financial and banking services and features to the merchants to make Elly one of the most comprehensive solutions on the market.
We upgraded our internal AML procedures to ensure compliance, and the Bank of Slovenia confirmed them in their inspection process.
GoC token team
On the token side, we’ve worked on setting up multiple different GoC Yield Farms to increase the liquidity of the token and create an additional incentive to buy and hold the GoC token. As a result, more than five yield farms were set up across different smartBCH DEXes, most notably GoC/BCH and GoC/Tango Yield Farms on TangoSwap smartBCH decentralised exchange. This led to a great increase in the liquidity of the smartBCH chain — which is now at more than $350,000.
We’ve made great efforts to bring GoC to centralised exchanges as well, and the conversations with the largest ones are ongoing.
Product team
The product team conducted UK market field research as Sales team members gained valuable insight directly from the merchants.
We have set up HubSpot as an internal data source connecting feedback from our current client base, sales team leads, and feedback from our clients. With the customer experience roadmap, we will ensure that the Product team keeps a close eye on our clients and their satisfaction.
We defined company-wide personas for our products and markets that will enable a customer-centric evolution of the product and keep the product and sales team on the same page.
An agile web infrastructure has been set up that enables our web-based content and functionalities to evolve rapidly.
We have grown our Product team with new members: A UX/UI specialist that will keep our user experience on point, a customer experience specialist that will keep a pulse on our client and market, a branding expert that will work on the evolution of our brand and work closely with the marketing team. Scaling our team has enabled us to optimised the on-boarding process and build the internal knowledge base to keep our team in sync and on track.
A new evolution of the Elly.com brand was designed and launched in the upcoming months, making our brand even more appealing and trustworthy to our client base.
The product team has defined a clear roadmap that will ensure a unique value proposition for our client base in the near and far future.
As a part of our company culture, we started hosting guests and speakers from different projects and experiences to keep broadening the horizons of our team members.
We found out that payment fees are confusing to merchants and often have many hidden fees/costs. We have simplified our pricing model and created clear and simple offers for our sales team that the merchant can understand. We have also built a simple fee calculator on our website that merchants can use to select the right pricing model for their business.
We constructed an automised mailing system to help us check client satisfaction needs and problems that might have accrued.
Elly POS BizDev
BNPL
Elly POS strives to be the holistic solution that would handle every merchants’ need at the POS. That is why we have closed a deal with a BNPL solution provider that will enable our UK merchants to reach customers who otherwise could not afford their products/services.
EPOS
In Q1, we made a deal with 2 EPOS providers in the UK market. Their solution will be integrated directly with Elly POS and in one case, available as a mobile version directly on the terminal. Additionally, we are having discussions (in different stages) with six more EPOS providers for the UK market.
PAYMENT METHODS
We have successfully closed a deal with a partner through which we can offer our merchants the possibility to accept payments from Alipay and WeChat Pay users.
We are also in the final stages of signing an agreement for supporting another global scheme provider.
OPEN BANKING
We have opened conversations with different open banking solution providers and are going through the selection process of finding the best partner for this segment.
REMITTANCE
We are in the final stages of closing the deal with one of the largest global remittance providers, where Elly POS merchants will be able to operate as a remittance provider.
GoCrypto BizDev
It is though for us to not be able to reveal some of the things that have been already achieved in Q1, but we can say that these things are in the making:
- GoCrypto will be enabled as a payment option on the POS devices at one of the largest music festivals in the world.
- We are in the last phases of discussion with 5 major global retail chains that will implement GoCrypto payment methods at their points of sale.
- We are in discussions with 2 top-tier European sports clubs to enable crypto payments via our GoCrypto solution.
- We are also in discussions with two additional wallet providers to possibly support them on the GoCrypto scheme.
Distribution/Licensing BizDev
- We are closing a deal with one acquirer to license the Elly POS technology together with GoCrypto to the markets where this acquirer is present. This deal has been in the making since Q4 last year.
- We have also opened a discussion with 4 potential distributors of Elly POS in 4 different European markets.
- We are in discussions with a global acquirer to potentially license or even white-label some of the Elly POS technologies together with GoCrypto support.
- We also have ongoing conversations with 8 banks for similar licensing deals.
Sales team
Sales started the year by setting up a new UK sales team, creating a training strategy for them, and executing it. Simultaneously, we also started a pilot sales project and successfully finished it.
To ease the work of sales representatives, back-office, and internal support HubSpot (CRM) was set up with automated processes, and all contracts were digitised. Later, the processes had to be adjusted to accommodate our new payment methods, Alipay and WeChat Pay, and BNPL LayBuy CRM. Slowly a new subdivision of the sales team started forming named sales operations intended for education, setting up processes, and new tools.
Integration of EPOS systems SwooPOS and eBlagajna with Elly POS were initiated and are already in the final stages.
Our new team has generated more than 1500 leads in the UK and has already started closing them. In the last month, we on-boarded and set up 13 new Elly POS clients and aspire to at least triple the number in the next month.
In Romania, we are building our client base slowly but steadily with just three external team members on the ground. In this quarter, seven new EPOS integration and distribution contracts were also signed.
Our GoCrypto network is growing every day, with more than 2500 locations in 32 countries.
We are currently on-boarding a new team member who will replace our current head of sales.
We are expanding our support team, adding a new member in training to be able to handle all future sales support.
Here are some of our happy merchants from London
Amica fitness London
Fletcher Flowers London
Vintage Cafe London
Our learnings
The biggest takeaway from this quarter is an appreciation for how difficult life can be at times. While some strive to achieve our goals, others battle for their lives daily. There was a lot on our to-do lists and plans, but when the Ukrainian war broke out, the entire team came together and said, “Let’s find a way to help them.” We spent a significant amount of time, knowledge, and technology developing a solution for all Ukrainian merchants, allowing them to accept crypto easily and allowing us to be the helping hand we set out to be from the beginning.
We learned that if you want to achieve great things, you must never compromise on quality and be willing to alter and adapt as your team grows. So we did an off-kilter on-boarding, where we taught our new team members about our principles and methods, and they showed us how we could improve. We were able to grow together and will continue to do so. We are proud to state that we are a company that learns by doing, and we will do everything we can to put the knowledge we have to good use.
In product development and market insights, we discovered that it’s critical to understand the industry and provide a market fit solution, so flexibility and adaptability to problems are required if you want to scale quickly. The market is the best source of information, and all you have to do is go out, listen to it, and be able to adapt quickly. Our teams were already agile, but this last quarter made us even more flexible, and we are proud.
Finally, we discovered that we have a fantastic community and need to devote more time to them. As a result, we will provide frequent AMAs with our team members so that our community can better understand what is going on at Elly.com.. We are more than thankful for all the support we had during our initiatives in the last few months, and we will strive to provide an adequate return.
