The Bottlepay social payments app (born as Bottle Pay) aims to relaunch in the next few weeks after closing due to regulations in December 2019.
After restructuring its product to adapt it to the European Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD5), the British startup offers an exchange wallet with social features on Reddit, Twitter and Discord. Pete Cheyne, the co-founder of Bottlepay, said there are over 1.000 people on the waiting list for the August closed beta launch.
“As we're moving to an app-native product, we can do a lot more,” Cheyne said. “We are also adding the ability to receive scheduled payments for buy bitcoin".
New and already seen features
Square's Cash App and others already offer this feature in the US, but in Europe, where Bottlepay is concentrated, there is also an additional feature that forwards the bitcoin to another address if desired. This means that users can choose custodial or non-custodial services.
“Lightning works in the background, without users having to manage channels,” Cheyne added. “There will be a small fee for the exchange between fiat and bitcoin and vice versa. There will also be levels, because people are interested in our app for different use cases ”.
Mark Webster, Bottlepay's chief executive, said his team now has "ongoing funding," which previously traded $ 2 million in shares in 2019. Webster added that the company will not support tokens in the next. future, even if one day it might happen. This year we are only talking about bitcoin.
“I think Lightning is at the heart of our strategy,” Webster said, referring to the bitcoin scaling solution. "As consumer demand increases, we can open up more channels."
An easy to use app for bitcoin payments
As part of this change, Webster said he is hiring, not tightening his belt for the recession, hoping to grow the team to around 35 people by 2021.
Cheyne said many of the hires so far have been for the marketing and legal teams, who have been involved in the extensive restructuring of the product. The hassle of having to adopt additional functionality for the know-your-customer requirement has also created an opportunity for new portfolio functionality.
"You can store a fiat balance," Cheyne said. "Just scan a Lightning code and pay for it with your balance in pounds or euros."
For now Bottlepay will open the beta program only to users in Europe. But Webster said the company hopes to open the beta to Americans and reactivate Telegram options by 2021.
When it does, it could be one of the few fiat-friendly wallets that leverages Lightning without any problems for the user. In some ways, this is comparable to the American consumer app Strike.
