Spend AMA — December 30, 2019

As 2019 is coming to a close, Spend is excited for what the future holds as we welcome the next decade of our products for mass adoption. Here at Spend, we believe in bringing a complete digital experience in using your funds, which includes fiat and digital currencies, globally. Our products were launched from beta to public at the beginning of this year and Spend has covered a tremendous amount of groundwork for the present and future of this platform. Check out our End-of-Year AMA below:

2019 Year End Summary — Spend.com (Spend Inc.)

• Added support for 23 Digital Currencies.
• Issued the Spend Visa card in 33 countries around the world.
• Deployed our Spend App in both Android and iOS.
• Added Apple Pay and Google Pay support for US card holders.
• Added Virtual cards with on-demand issuing for US cardholders.
• Created a Listing Program for coins to be added to the product line.
• Joined the Microsoft Partner Network.
• Partnered with Bitsdaq to launch Crypto-Backed Visa card in APAC.
• Upgraded our Black Card to offer industry leading 6% rewards back.
• Approved by Visa to issue in US, CA, UK, EU (31 countries), and APAC (8 countries).
• Approved by Visa to issue a Platinum Visa Travel Card in AP (Asia-Pacific).
• Partnered with Paxos to bring regulated crypto payments on the platform.
• Approved for numerous Money Transmitter and Lending Licenses in the USA.
• Added Gift card support for over 100 premium brands to be purchased with any supported currency.
• Partnered with numerous Banking entities to bring Multi-Currency support on the Spend App.
• Gained a variety of Spend Business partners.
• Partnered with Evolve Bank and Trust to bring digital banking and the all-new Spend Visa card, issued by Evolve.
• Launched the Sats Back promotion where rewards were paid in BTC for 2 months.

2019 Year End Summary — Spend.org (Spend Europe Ltd.)

• Launched Spendcoin in Bittrex, UPbit, OKEx, Kucoin, Binance DEX, DigiFinex and other markets opening access for users to purchase SPND to utilize on Spend’s platforms.
• Launched Spendchain Beta, a high speed blockchain powered by Tendermint.
• Issued a BEP2 standard Spendcoin to trade directly on Binance DEX.
• Enabled Spendcoin to be spent at more than 40 million locations worldwide.
• Added Spendcoin memberships for higher tier cards and discounts.
• Distributed nearly 50% of Spendcoins via Proof-of-Purchase and other distribution protocols since the network became fully operational.

2020–2021 Road Map

• Deliver Spend Visa Platinum Travel Cards in the AP (Asia-Pacific) region.
• Deliver Spend Visa Cards in the LATAM and CEMEA regions (South America and Middle East / Central European).
• Deliver Spend Visa cards in the African Region.
• Launch Spendchain and migrate SPND to the native chain.
• Continuously working on additional licensing opportunities.
• Working to launch our services in NYS.
• Gain additional strategic partners for our ecosystem of products.
• Continue to welcome additional Spend Business clients.
• Focus primarily on B2B business to help generate more B2C benefits.
• Add additional Lending and Interest earning features within the Spend App.

SPEND APP 3.0

We are extremely excited about this update as we completely redesigned the current app to bring a more friendly and eye-appealing user experience and user interface. Spend v2.5 was developed several months ago, but we didn’t have banking clearance to release it, until recently. We anticipated it to be done months ago, but when dealing with banking and regulators, it doesn’t always work out as expected. While waiting for clearance, we decided to work on Spend v3 in parallel.

Spend v3 doesn’t just look pretty, but it also has a lot under the hood. This version of the app is highly scalable for us to add numerous assets and currencies on the go without having to actually add more code support into the app. We have added a more dynamic KYC system to add new regions without having to add more code as well. Spend v3 also makes the app ready for Apple Pay and Google Pay support for all other non-US card programs in the future, which we are actively working towards, starting with our European cards.

Export History — Users can now export all of their Spend App transaction history (which includes the Spend Card) in a CSV to their linked email address. Just select the date range and follow the prompts.

Banking — YES, IT’S HERE! US cardholders will now have access to our full fledged banking system provided by Evolve Bank and Trust. Users will be able to open a Direct Deposit Account with FDIC insurance of $250,000 on the USD deposits they add to the Wallet, held at the bank in an account under their name! ACH funds in and out of the wallet automatically with just a few buttons in the USD / Banking Wallet screens. Users can Direct Deposit their checks directly into the Spend Wallet by using the account and routing numbers provided in the banking screens. More features will be released around the banking products in the near future.

Spend Evolve Visa Cards — With the launch of our banking system with Evolve Bank and Trust, US cardholders will receive the all-new Spend Evolve Visa Cards. These cards will be no different than the cards offered today in functionality and design, but will instead be issued by Evolve Bank & Trust, since everything will be interconnected with the new banking system. Keep in mind, only cardholders will have access to Spend’s banking system. The current virtual, physical, and digital Spend Visa cards issued by Sutton Bank will be deactivated by January 20, 2020. However, current cardholders should be receiving their replacement cards free of charge and at no additional membership cost, prior to this date.

SPEND LICENSING UPDATES

Spend is continuing to expand the product offerings and development of new products and features. Some of our new products launching soon will require Spend to be licensed in the United States by each individual state, as applicable. These licenses requires a vast number of costs and resources to obtain and Spend is proud to announce it has received the following approvals (NMLS ID: 1783708):

1. Washington — Approved by the Department of Financial Institutions as a Money Transmitter and Currency exchanger. We have also been approved to offer Virtual Currency services and added on the Department of Financial Institutions Virtual Currency approved list: https://dfi.wa.gov/sites/default/files/documents/virtual-currency-licensee-list.pdf
2. Utah — Approved by the Department of Financial Institutions as a Money Transmitter
3. Montana — Approved by the Department of Banking and Financial Institutions as a Consumer Lender.
4. Mississippi — Approved by the Department of Banking and Consumer Finance as a Money Transmitter
5. Minnesota — Approved by the Department of Commerce as a Money Transmitter
6. Iowa — Approved by the Division of Banking as Consumer Lender
7. Idaho — Approved by the Department of Finance as a Money Transmitter
8. Arizona — Approved by the Department of Financial Institutions as a Money Transmitter

SPENDCHAIN

As our Beta program comes to a conclusion, we have successfully made it over the 1 millionth block height. Our development team is finalizing the mainnet for launch and we have a hard date of 2/1/2020 for the launch of the Spendchain main network. We will be working closely with our community and exchanges throughout January and February for the migration and token swap procedures from ERC20 and BEP2 to mainnet SPND. We will be posting separate updates on this topic shortly.

We will be launching the network with Spend holding the initial 21 validators for 60 days with no block rewards being granted to Spend. That means Spend will cover the costs of running the network with no incentives to ensure the network is running stable and healthy. Within the 60 days and after users can begin voting for new Validators to run the network and Spend will remove each Validator as a new one is voted in with a minimum of 1 vote over the standard 50M required deposit.

Example: Validator 22 gets voted with 50,000,001 SPND, this will automatically kick our Validator 21 out and we will do this until the network is fully decentralized and controlled by the global community. Spend does not plan to run any Validator nodes after the migration is complete.

Our Validator Program will also grant Validators and 3 users of their choice to have 0% fees on the Spend App platform. That means all transactions will have no fees and be free of charge for users to buy, sell, and spend their virtual currencies supported on the Spend App.

SPEND BUSINESS

Our primary revenue driver is our B2B side of Spend called Spend Business (spend.com/business). For those who are not aware of Spend Business, it is our commercial side of the company that focuses on offering a robust library of APIs and SDKs for companies to quickly scale and build their own financial application with both fiat and digital currencies. Spend Business accounts for a majority of Spend’s revenue, which enables Spend to offer an aggressive and comprehensive rewards program for the B2C side of the business. Since Spend does not have a significant marketing budget, this opens up additional capital to add more features on and within our product line. 2020 will be the year we shift a majority of our focus and attention to our B2B side to assist the next decade of applications, powered by Spend. We plan to start announcing Spend Business partners now and in the future as we continue to shift our focus to our B2B side of Spend.

SPEND AMA

Here are the selected community questions and answers below. Please bare in mind we will not answer any questions about exchanges and / or prices. Spendcoin is not an investment and should not be used as such. Spendcoin is a utility token designed to be used in our ecosystem of products only:

Question #1 — Can we get clarification on actual fees and how slippage is determined?

A: Spend charges a transparent line fee item of 1% on all buys, sells, and spends. This can be found in the transaction history of the charge or item. Slippage rates are only applicable to virtual currency transactions. These rates are determined by market liquidity, market depth, volatility, pairs, and other market conditions for specific virtual currency. These are automatic and based on our Spend Authorization Engine which determines how much in slippage rates are applied to protect the transaction from losses. There is no fixed percentage and it is dynamic based on the amount of the purchase. Even on stablecoins there is a slippage we must consider as we do not do the exchanges ourselves and instead use licensed crypto exchanges whom we work with to perform the exchange. We will work on adding more liquidity networks for conversions to improve our slippage as time progresses.

Question #2 — will we ever be able to spend fiat to earn rewards as other competitors offer?

A: We are actively discussing this topic internally. As of today, we do not plan to add rewards back on spending fiat. That being said, this may change in the future.

Question #3 — Is there any news on when the Spend Black Metal card will be released?

A: Yes! We are working with our card manufacturers to get this right. Nothing public facing in terms of updates as of today, but we will have an update on this topic soon.

Question #4 — Is there any thought to introduce further perks for black card holders such as lounge access, insurance, etc?

A: Yes, Spend VIP would be the program that adds more perks in the future. Currently we are launching Spend VIP for our black and preferred cardholders in the USA, which will add an additional 1–20% rewards back on each purchase at select retailers. We see this as a huge value proposition that will be released very soon. Other features such as lounge access are being discussed, but no plans as of today to add these. These and other features will be rolled out region by region, including Canada in the future as we are actively integrating new platform partners to enable this experience directly on the Spend App.

Question #5 — Since this is the year-end AMA, it would be nice to have a general delivery time for the feature allowing export of trading / spending activity to CSV for tax purposes?

A: Spend has launched the Export History feature in Spend v3 which will export all of our wallet activity with dates, times, and values to help with tax preparations. We made it extremely easy to forward this data to an accountant or certified tax professional for proper advice. If you, or the community, sees anything to improve here, let us know so we can add more features to it. This is not tax advice, please consult a professional for further details.

Question #6 — Any plans to introduce a web-powered backend to the app that allows for doing simple account viewing things similar to the login for my fiat bank account? It’s hard to get a good overview of my personal finances without a website to log into and do some of the things I’m used to with my standard bank account like viewing account history, balances at specific times, categorize where I’m spending my money, etc

A: Yes, we are actively working on a web wallet right now. It should be ready within Q1-Q2.

Question #7 — When will Canadian cardholders have their cards enabled again?

A: We are actively working on this topic and hope to have new cards with actual chips and Paywave NFC sent soon. We don’t have a timetable on this, but we are pushing for early next year. The current card manufacturer and issuer just couldn’t get the EMV BIN certification complete and here at Spend we have a standard of product offerings that need to be met. Therefore, we have already begun the process of getting new cards in the Canadian market and will have an update on this for the community soon.

Question #8 — Hello team! I appreciate the effort of the project. Well i guess we can try adding a spend marketplace where people can opt to buy or order services or products with spend partner.

A: Yes, the team is working with all of our partners and new ones to open up a dynamic marketplace where we can use Spend Pay (a Spendchain Feature) to open direct crypto-to-crypto experiences. There’s a lot of work going on in the background on this which we will make public soon.

Question #9 — why are there no stable coins? of there were stable coins, would the incur a 1% fee when spent using my card? why should anyone pay a 1% transaction fee everytime they use their spend card when there a hundreds of debit/credit cards which charge no fees at all

A: There are stablecoins in the app and we plan to add more in the future. Stablecoins are virtual currencies and do garner transaction fees of 1%. Lastly, you are able to spend fiat such as USD, CAD, and EUR with 0% fees which would work exactly like your traditional debit card. We only charge transaction conversion fees for virtual currencies.

Question #10 — In the WP it says 50% of total supply is allocated for founders/advisors. (Which makes 2 billion tokens) And with regards to the distribution of those; it says in FAQ of Spend website that 2.5 million tokens per month plus 50 million tokens per year to the team (founders/advisors) It makes a total of 80 million tokens in a year for the team. But 2 billion is allocated for the team. So the team will have those 2 billion tokens in (2 bill / 80 mill = ) 25 years ???

A: Spend Europe is responsible for managing Spendcoin and distributions when it was granted the remaining allocation from the Spend Foundation. In total there are 2 billion ERC20 SPND tokens and 2 billion BEP2 SPND tokens. When the mainnet launches there will a total of 4 billion SPND native tokens minted and open for conversion swaps from non-native chains (Ethereum and Binance). The Team and Founder allocation will remain the same with 2.5M distributed monthly and 50M distributed annually. As far as circulating supply that would require us to disclose how many card locks we have in our platform, which we will not do as none of our card details are public for competitive reasons. However, when Spendchain launches we do plan to bring a higher level of transparency into our tokenomics as many of our future functions will be on-chain.

Question #11 — When will be the spend integration into particl market place?

A: We are actively working on new integrations with our partners. Stay tuned for more updated on these topics in 2020.

Question #12 — Would you consider implementing a feature for the USD “hot” wallet to allow for periodic autobuys of assets similar to Coinbase? It would be internal to the app and not need to rely on the traditional banking system (and all the lags therein) simply deposit some crypto, sell to USD, then configure autobuys for assets of choice, which would slowly drain the USD holdings as autobuys execute. Replenishing USD wallet keeps funds from running out and notifications can be sent to the user when autobuys have reduced the USD hot wallet to a level that’s too low. When traditional USD deposits become allowable, users could be able to periodically deposit USD directly into their account which then becomes subject to the rules of the specific autobuys that they had set up. This feature would make the app super convenient and powerful in my opinion.

A: We plan to add recurring buys soon and “trigger” (limit) orders where you can make an automatic purchase when an asset hits a “trigger” price that you set. For recurring buys users can use their linked bank accounts (card holders) or USD wallet to make automatic purchases based on a pre-determined time period. For Trigger orders users can set the price they want to buy an asset. For example, if Bitcoin is $7,300, you can set a Trigger order for $7,000 where if the asset hits $7,000 in the market, the order would execute. We believe this will give our users a higher level of functionality to buy and sell virtual currencies on the Spend App.

Question #13 — Can we use checks if a bank account is given?

A: At this time our banking integrations does not enable check deposits. However, we do plan to add Remote Check Deposit in the very near future directly within the Spend App by just scanning the check with the mobile camera. We will launch this feature sometime in 2020.

Question #14 — Will you bring back the wallet rewards for those who do not abuse it?

A: At this time, we have no plans to add Wallet Rewards back. We will add other reward features soon to Spend VIP members (Spend Preferred and Black members)

Question #15 — What is the status of banking integration for US, Canada, EU and Asia? Will each region have same or separate roll out dates?

A: Banking integrations will be regionally available, as each has their own provider. Right now, we are ready and have clearance for US. We are actively working on all of our other regions.

Question #16- What is the status of card EMV certification in Canada? When can Apple Pay functionality be expected for Spend cards in Canada?

A: EMV Certification has failed numerous times with our current issuer and manufacturer. Instead of waiting for them to get it right, which they haven’t been able to for over a year, we decided to cut our losses short and focus on getting a new provider for our users who has an excellent track record. Therefore, we are actively working on bringing Spend Visa cards back to Canadian card holders ASAP. This will be for free and should be soon. Once we have more updates on this topic we will update our community.

Question #17 — Buying/selling/exchanging SPND has been under “maintenance” in the app for weeks. What is the rationale for this and what is the go forward plan? Is the intention to turn this capability back on in the Spend wallet or will users need to continue using exchanges to transact with SPND (multi step, not user friendly)

A: We turned off buying and selling SPND to make sure its properly serviced for Spendchain when launched. Spendchain Beta is now complete, and we are making the transition for Spendchain mainnet. During this period, we wanted to make sure people are purchasing SPND for usage only. Leaving the option to buy/sell would potentially cause misusage of Spendcoin for it’s intended use. Spendcoin is not to be used for speculative or investment purposes, but rather for consumptive and utility usage. Once the mainnet launches and block rewards are activated, we will turn on buying/selling of SPND connected to the open-marketplaces where users can do everything on the Spend App again as the network is fully decentralized at that point.

Question #18 — In Nov & Dec 2019, spend rewards paid in BTC. What are the plans for rewards going forward, will users be able to choose/toggle between SPND and BTC for rewards?

A: Starting on January 1, 2020, rewards will be paid out in SPND again. We do not have any plans to change this in the near future.

Question #19 — Once all regions have rolled out, with app 2.5 and banking integration operational, what marketing plans do you have for 2020 to raise awareness more broadly and begin to ramp adoption?

A: We do not have any specific marketing plans in mind at this time except for our B2B commercial side. Once we have all global markets rolled in the future, we will work on marketing plans. Currently the marketing savings is what enables us to offer comprehensive rewards programs.

Question #20 — Any plans to offer a joint account so my wife and I could each have spend cards that work off a single (joint) wallet/account? This is how we use our existing bank accounts and credit cards.

A: Yes we plan to offer sub-accounts and potentially kid accounts in the future tied to the main (parent) account.

“That’s all folks!” — We are looking forward to new decade of BUIDL’ing and launching new products and services with the community.

While the information provided herein is considered to be true and correct at the date of publication, changes in circumstances after the time of publication may impact on the accuracy of the information.

No cryptocurrency is loaded on to the Spend Visa® Card. All assets are converted to local fiat currency prior to loading on the Visa® network.