FINANCIAL TECHNOLOGY (fintech) company D-Wallet Technologies Corp., which operates under the name DTaka, on Wednesday launched a blockchain-supported e-wallet with the same brand, which focuses on overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and their families.
The DTaka digital wallet is available first on the Huawei AppGallery.
“I think one of the key differentiators is the blockchain-powered technology [supporting] a lot of our tools within the app, so that’s a big plus. To the end customer, it doesn’t really matter what the tech is. They won’t see it, but the benefits are number one, lower fees, two, more safe and secure, and number three is we’ll be able to introduce other blockchain-related micro services,” DTaka Chief Executive Officer Emmanuel R. Samson IV said at the launch on Wednesday.
DTaka Chief Operating Officer Kristoffer Anthony S. Patron said DTaka makes remittances cheaper and faster by using stablecoins.
“The way we do it is we use blockchain so that the actual asset is transferred to stablecoins here in the Philippines and we convert it to peso. But the user won’t have to do the conversion. We automate that whole process,” Mr. Patron said.
“We want to bring remittance fees down to 3%, which is the United Nations target.”
Mr. Samson said the e-wallet will be available on other devices within the next month. They target to have an e-wallet user base of 500,000 within their first 18 months of operations.
“We are hyper-focused on OFWs and their families,” Mr. Patron said.
The company is also planning to introduce products like loans, merchant wallets, and a tokenized reward system for remittances and transactions, he said.
Most of DTaka’s services will use Web3 and blockchain technologies, Mr. Patron added.
“For the rewards, we are making sure that there are no duplicates or there is no double spending happening when you’re using your rewards under the plan. More than that, there are a lot of things that we can still do, like having a universal platform with the rewards that can work with other wallets.”
The company is also looking to partner with banks, remittance centers, convenience stores, and sari-sari stores to bring down transfer fees, expand cash-in and cash-out functions, and make remitting faster and more convenient for OFWs and their dependents.
Mr. Samson added that DTaka is studying a subscription- or fee-based model to bring down transfer costs.
“This is something that we’ve built in when we were designing our monetization plan as well,” he said. “We believe that we need to democratize the fees that users are paying for in transferring money to one another and to other banks.” — Aaron Michael C. Sy
