The New Age of Financial Transactions
In this article we will shed some light on how StellarX helps to power the future of global payments using the Stellar network.
As you know, Stellar is an open-source decentralized protocol that allows transactions between ANY currencies on the Stellar network — essentially, it’s a place to move assets of many types in fast, easy and cheap ways.
The Stellar network is able to fulfill its function as a universal payment system through StellarX. The beauty of StellarX is its ability to act as a platform that bridges and connects different economies and currencies in a way that was not possible in traditional financial services.
Anchors Are The Key — But How Do They Work?
Anchors are truly incredible mechanisms that can power innovative financial possibilities across the Stellar ecosystem. They’re what define Stellar as a blockchain that’s not rooted in moving a specific asset type, but a functional blockchain that harnesses moving any type of asset. In short, Anchors provide a pivotal bridge into the Stellar ecosystem by allowing any off-chain asset to be deposited or withdrawn on StellarX.
What’s even better? They’re cheap, fast, and frankly more powerful than traditional money transmitter options.
Let’s consider the following scenario:
I’m a user living in New York City that wants to send Nigerian Naira to a user in Lagos, Nigeria.
Traditionally: the user could use a money transmitter like a Western Union, and be subject to the crazy world of money transmitter restrictions such as: delayed timelines, fees related to transmission costs, foreign exchange costs, delayed delivery options, amount sent, destination country, currency availability, agent location hours, and differences in time zones.
But why would you do that if you have a more cost efficient and faster alternative?
StellarX: the user can use Anchors to deposit USD using AnchorUSD. Once you receive AnchorUSD, you can exchange your currency for Nigerian Naira using Cowrie’s Anchor (NGNT) and send it to the recipient user’s wallet. Once the recipient user receives NGNT, they can withdraw it directly to their Nigerian Naira bank account.
Why is this important?
Because it’s cheaper and faster for two parties to deposit, send, receive, and withdraw fiat currencies. We believe that Anchors will be the key players for financial inclusiveness (and ease) and one of the most important growth factors for the adoption of the platform and ecosystem.
Based on that vision, StellarX is constantly looking to integrate new Anchors to our platform. Our goal is to have an ecosystem of strong off-chain assets, represented as both fiat and crypto Anchors. The more we have integrated, the higher the likelihood Stellar can make traditional payment systems obsolete.
So far we have integrated 2 fiat and 10+ crypto Anchors but this is just the beginning. Through our partners like AnchorUSD, Cowrie Exchange, and aPay, now our users can deposit, send, receive, and withdraw USD, NGNT, BTC, ETH, LTC, SALT, OMG, ZRX, BCH, KIN, MTL, REP, XEL, BAT, and LINK.
For more updates on future Anchor launches, please follow us on Twitter. We have several Anchors in the pipeline that we will be adding between now and the end of 2019. Stay tuned!
New Anchor Deposit and Withdrawal Experience
Since we are hyper-focused on our Anchor experience, we have also invested in a UX overhaul of our deposit and withdraw journeys for both fiat and crypto. Now it’s even easier to add off-chain assets on StellarX!
Path Payments and How They Tie to Anchors
As you might have heard, we recently released path payments on StellarX. Huh? Path payments? Allow me to explain…
The Stellar Network allows payments to be made across assets using the path payments feature. A path payment specifies a series of assets to route a payment through, from source asset (the asset debited from the payer) to destination asset (the asset credited to the payee).
The magic of a path payment is that you do not need to hold the asset that the other party wants to receive. StellarX users are now able to send the tokens they own and it will immediately convert to the desired destination token they want to send to the recipient.
So how does this tie to Anchors? Let’s go back to our example:
I’m a user living in New York City that wants to send Nigerian Naira to a user in Lagos, Nigeria.
Let’s say the user in Nigeria doesn’t hold any USD on Stellar, and wants to receive Nigerian Naira. In order to send USD from my wallet to a peer in Nigeria, I can send it by way of a path payment — all I need to do is select the recipient and the amount of USD that equates to the amount of NGN the recipient wants to (or is asking to) receive. Now I can send USD to them via StellarX and they will receive NGN…in seconds!
New and Upcoming Features by Platform
In our July Medium article we talked about what we were building on web and mobile, here’s what’s been delivered since then and what we plan on delivering in the future.
What’s New On Web?
- Path Payments: specify a series of assets to route a payment through, from source asset (the asset debited from the payer) to destination asset (the asset credited to the payee).
- Anchors: we recently announced Cowrie’s NGNT Anchor! You can now deposit and withdrawal Nigerian Naira on StellarX!
- More Markets: adding more high demand currencies and tokens in our market listings. Stellar is THE blockchain for digitizing any off-chain asset, so we are focused on continuing to improve our ability to unify disjoint economies and blockchains on Stellar.
- Export Transactions: the ability to download your transaction history. Simple and often requested by our users.
- Anchor Deposit and Withdrawal UX Improvement: we touched on this above, but decided to highlight it again :)
What’s Coming Up On Web?
- Merge Accounts: the ability for users to close out balances from one Stellar account to another.
- Funding Option on Sign Up: for new users, we’re going to be adding deposit options right in the sign up flow.
- Additional Information on Issuers: we’re going to surface more information about each issuer you’re trading with so you know more about the asset you’re trading!
- Portfolio View: we’re going to be overhauling the wallet & balance experience so it’s more of a portfolio-style view that makes it easier to understand your holdings, balances, and trading history across multiple asset types.
What’s New On Mobile?
- Path Payments: specify a series of assets to route a payment through, from source asset (the asset debited from the payer) to destination asset (the asset credited to the payee).
- Token Lookup: the ability to look up and add tokens by domain, code, or name instead of by issuer address.
What’s Coming Up On Mobile?
- Market Listings & Trading: buy and sell any token listed on StellarX. Easily execute trades with one touch.
- Deposit & Withdrawals: we’re bringing deposit and withdrawal options to mobile, Anchors for off-chain assets, XLM deposits, and more!
- Filter By Transaction: the ability to filer recent activity by different transaction types (i.e. payments, trades).
- Export Transactions: the ability to download your transaction history. Simple and often requested by our users.
- Base Currency Selector Enhancement: an improved version from viewing base currencies only by text to viewing by text, icon, label and code!
- Android10 Light / Dark Theme Support: the ability to view your screen in light mode and dark mode.
Video Feature from Stellar Development Foundation
Check out the recent feature on the “StellarX Mission” from Stellar Development Foundation!
“A developer in any part of the world can build a wallet, you don’t have to be apart of a big bank, or a big company, it really is all there…that’s the magic, it’s a global order book on chain…talent doesn’t have to stay in the borders of North America, it’s beyond those borders.”
To learn more about StellarX visit StellarX.com
For the latest updates, follow us on Twitter @StellarXhq and LinkedIn
