2023-10-07 00:35:15
‘Cashback’ literally means money back and in commercial environments it is a term that we can find with two different uses. The first, when, in the absence of a cashier, we ask for some cash in an establishment where we are making a purchase. If they have this service, they will give us the requested amount in cash while adding the amount to the purchase charge, so that it becomes a mini-loan that we return at the same time we pass the card through the dataphone. The second refers to the loyalty programs offered by some companies and through which the customer receives a percentage of the value of the purchase they make. This category is where Poly operates, one of the startups participating in the next edition of B-Venture, which, as a novelty, offers the possibility of obtaining that money in cryptocurrencies.
«We believe that access to digital assets must be democratized, although to do so we must first do some evangelization work. It must be explained that it is a revolution that goes far beyond the fluctuations in the price of Bitcoin, that it is not something of a few rich people or people who want to expose their money, and that even the European Central Bank is already preparing the launch of the digital euro because the technology that supports it, the ‘blockchain’, provides greater security to banking transactions than what we have today. It is a technology with which we can create many things,” explains Alberto Levy, founder of the startup, convinced that a good way to start getting familiar with this new money is to offer it as a “reward” for some of our purchases.
Poly Cashback
A little context. ‘Cashback’ is a discount that, instead of being applied generally to the retail price as occurs in sales, is only offered to those who make the purchase through certain means or channels. This is, although we do not relate it to the term, the case of bank cards that deposit part of the money spent on gasoline into our account, for example, thanks to the agreements reached by the issuing bank with the oil company. In recent years, the rise of electronic commerce has given a new boost to ‘cashback’, which now reaches us through a series of applications and websites, which, like Poly, base their business model on generating traffic to certain ‘online’ stores, charge a commission to these establishments for purchases made by ‘sent’ customers and, finally, give a part of that commission to the customer themselves to encourage new purchases.
Agreements with brands
In the specific case of Poly, when registering they will ask us how we want to obtain that reward. We will be able to choose between two cryptocurrencies – satoshi, the smallest unit of Bitcoin, and Ethereum – or tokens launched by blockchain or digital asset exchange platforms such as Solana, B2M or BGB. It will be the currency in which the ‘cashback’ achieved with our purchases in any of the 700 brands or chains with which the ‘startup’ has already reached agreements in Spain is added. From Adidas to AliExpress through Iberia, Roca, Ikea or Telepizza. «The client pays directly to the business and the business then gives us the agreed commission. They give it to us in euros and we are the ones who make the conversion to the crypto asset chosen by the user and load it into their user account on the Poly platform,” summarizes Levy.
In that account, in addition to seeing the accumulated total, we can follow the price of those digital assets. That is, how much they are worth in hard and fast euros at each moment. If the one we have chosen is not going through its best moment, they give us the possibility of changing it for another. «Obviously, you are exposed to the same fluctuations as anyone who invests in the market, although in our case we are always talking about very small amounts. There are agreements in which the ‘cashback’ with the merchant is 30% of the value of a purchase, but there are others in which it is 0.25% and always applied to purchases that are not usually very large either. In any case, we give you the option to take it out whenever you want,” explains Levy.
Democratization
«We want to bring all people closer to the revolution of digital assets»
The company already has 100,000 users – half in Spain – who have carried out 600,000 transactions on its platform. Last year, the first operational year, it had a turnover of 80,000 euros and, although it is already present in twenty countries where it has reached agreements with 4,800 brands, it is now seeking half a million in financing to boost its presence abroad, mainly in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia to then enter the US market. To achieve this, he will attend the B-Venture celebration, EL CORREO’s startup forum, on the 17th and 18th. The event, which this year reaches its eighth edition, is sponsored by the Department of Economic Development, Sustainability and Environment of the Basque Government, the development agency SPRI, the Provincial Council of Bizkaia and the Bilbao City Council, as well as the collaboration of BStartup of Banco Sabadell, BBVA Spark, BBK, Laboral Kutxa, CaixaBank and the University of Deusto.
A small resource against inflation
«In Spain, consumers have been starting to see inflation as a problem for the domestic economy relatively recently, but in Latin America they are very accustomed to it and, precisely for this reason, ‘cashback’ applications there are very successful. “People consider them as a small resource to achieve something for their money,” explains the founder of Poly, Alberto Levy. “It is true that, in our case, being linked to crypto assets we may not seem like the best option for them, but we give them the easiest way to start dealing with the money of the future,” he emphasizes.
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