Cirklo Light is live

IntellectEU is proud to announce that it was able to act as a development partner on a collaboration project between the Studio (Belfius) and OnzeStadApp. Together, they launched the application Cirklo Light. The application makes it possible to buy and spend local digital vouchers, boosting local economies.

The solution consists of a webshop where a citizen buys a voucher for a predefined amount. After receiving the voucher (in the form of a QR code), it can be used in the city in which it was purchased. Additionally, cities can create / subsidize vouchers and send them by letter to their citizens to boost local purchases. Finally, the merchants use the Cirklo Light application to scan the vouchers to complete a purchase.

Let’s dive deeper into the different flows:

Signing up

To be able to sign up in the merchant application, a merchant must be invited by the city. A city provides the CSV file with emails that should be whitelisted to use the application. When a merchant opens the application either on their phone or laptop, they choose the city in which they want to register, enter their email address, and choose a password. If the email was not whitelisted in the selected city, a merchant would not be able to register. When whitelisted, a merchant can proceed by confirming their email. The merchant will then be asked to provide some information about their shop, such as the name and address. The merchant should also enter their IBAN and VAT number to enable redemption of the Cirklos to fiat money.

The final step of the sign-up flow is setting the interval for automatic redemption. It is possible to have Cirklos redeemed weekly and monthly. A merchant can always change this interval in the settings of their profile.

Spending a voucher

To spend a bought or received voucher, the merchant scans a voucher and sets the amount that a citizen would like to spend. If this amount meets the threshold specified by the city (cities will be able to set the maximum spendable amount in the next product update), then a transaction will be created, and, depending on the entered amount, a voucher will be fully or partially spent.

Redeeming Cirklos

When the merchant’s total balance exceeds 10EUR, a merchant can manually trigger the redemption, which leads to the creation of a transaction. Also, weekly or monthly, depending on the settings which the merchant selected during the sign-up, the application will automatically check the balance of the merchant. If this balance exceeds 10EUR, the Cirklos will be redeemed and a transaction will be created. Once the transaction is processed by the bank, a merchant will see the money on their account.

Cirklo Light is a blockchain-based solution that keeps track of the vouchers and wallets on-chain.

All wallets that store a value of fiat money contain a cryptographic link to the blockchain application. It means that the blockchain application secures a one-to-one relation of funds it stores and values its issues. A voucher always belongs to the wallet owner who ordered it. Also, a voucher has an expiration date that is set during its creation and this date cannot be changed.

Today Halle, Waterloo, Kapelle-op-den-Bos, Aarschot, and Court-Saint-Etienne are already using this solution to boost their local economies. Will your city be next?

Learn more at https://cirklo-light.com/