Product Development Update; August

Pieces of the puzzle called the VouchForMe Social Proof Platform are continuing to be put together, with great care and enthusiasm, by our team. In the last Product Development update post we explained the nitty-gritty details about the progress on smart contracts, back-end development, and front-end fine tuning. For the peak of the summer, we chose to focus on two critical aspects of our product: money and legal compliance. We couldn’t quite decide whether to call them hot or cool topics; we just knew they needed to be done, no matter the chills they might give us.
Online Payments
Vouching is the focal point of the whole VouchForMe concept. Moreover, when we say ‘vouch for’ or ‘endorse’ we are dead serious: VouchForMe needs users to really put their money where their mouth is. In our case, this means that each endorsement (that brings so many benefits to both the endorser and the endorsee) will need to be supported with the endorser’s “flexible friend” called Visa, MasterCard or something of the sort. What this requires from us is to connect with a reliable and flexible credit card processing partner that supports the specifics of the VouchForMe use case: the endorser’s credit card stays on file only as a guarantee. Unlike an online store, if everything goes well, VouchForMe doesn’t touch the card for weeks, months, well, preferably never.
Legal Framework
Now that the prototype platform is up and running internally for demo and testing purposes, we were able to go through the whole user journey with our legal team. They needed to see and understand what specific legal issues arise when users interact with the product. For example, the endorser needs to be aware of the vital elements of an insurance policy in question — which needs to be, on the other hand, treated as a piece of confidential personal information. Many other steps of the user journey also require a similar kind of balance between practicality and the right side of the regulation. All in all, what the legal proof-check will to boil down to is, first, minor adjustments of the user experience so that legal compliance can be ticked off, and second, a nice little document or two called Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy. Yummy! (Don’t worry, we’ll share those two candies with you, too.)

