As always, things have been very busy at aXpire. We’ve got a number of updates which we want to bring to you all, so this will be fairly lengthy.
Firstly, as mentioned in recent weeks, we’ve engaged a marketing firm to work with us in marketing the AXPR token and project, with a focus on the PayBX app. We’re making the name of this marketing firm public alongside a proper announcement before the end of this week. This firm has already been onboarded and is in the process of building out a content plan and other material prior to kick-off with daily social media posts, engagement in the Telegram group, and other marketing activities which’ll ramp-up this week.
Secondly, our search for a Project Lead continues. We’ve interviewed several candidates and even made two offers, but we’ve not yet been able to finalize this position. For the two candidates we made offers, we were beat out by other organizations who presumably made better offers. This is of course unfortunate, but the offers we made were solid (six figure total package value) so we’re confident in finding the right candidate for this position in the not too distant future. This is a critical piece in the overall strategy for AXPR and PayBX specifically, so we’re putting a lot of effort into filling this role (with the right candidate). As mentioned previously, if you or someone you know can fill this role, send CVs to jh@axpire.com — if you refer someone and they get an offer from us and accept it, we’ll throw in an AXPR referral fee to you of $1,500.
On the product side of things, we’ve also got several important updates. The most important one concerns PayBX, how things stand, and the timeline for getting the product live and available in the App Store and Play Store. To start, we initially planned to release PayBX in Q3 of 2021, a date we were previously confident in. As outlined in our prior blog post updating about the change to this timeline, regulatory issues were a blocker to getting the application live in time, and we were also late in onboarding the right front-end + design resources for the development due to various HR related issues. To be candid, the application is not yet complete, and the delays make us realize now that we would have missed the Q3 date regardless of our regulatory issues.
Bank connection API availability issues also means we’re currently limited to launching the “connect-to-card” feature in Ireland, France, Spain and Netherlands — just 4 countries. However, if we can pull it off as intended, PayBX’s “connect-to-card” feature will instead be available in 29 EEA countries from the get-go (Germany, France, Denmark, Croatia, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Belgium, Estonia, Ireland, Latvia, Luxembourg, Norway, Romania, Spain, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Iceland, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden). Fixing this involves completely swapping out the partner we’re using for this part of the application.
All-in-all, we’re roughly 4–5 months out from solving all PayBX-related issues and getting the app live for downloads (ideally incl. wider location availability for “connect-to-card” in EEA — it’ll be released regardless, but this is a key item we’re working on). We realize this is a delay, but it also includes the holiday period and less effective time in the months of December/January which adds to the length of this timeline. Once we get closer to PayBX’s release, a firm release date will be set, and this will only be done once it is 100% confirmed and will not be strayed from. We will of course look to reduce this timeline wherever possible.
With the introduction of the marketing firm, as mentioned at the start of this update, marketing and hype for PayBX’s release will begin in the next few weeks while ramping up to the release date and go-live launch of the application. Videos and screenshots of the application will become available ahead of the holiday period in December and will provide insight into how PayBX works and what you can expect as a user. We intend to market the product vigorously to garner an audience lined up and excited for its release, including launching a pre-launch signup campaign with rewards in AXPR for signups and referrals before year end.
As a teaser of what PayBX eventually will become, the future roadmap for the app has also recently received a big new addition. In a later release, we plan to offer users the ability to create virtual prepaid cards from within the application. You select your funding method, e.g. BTC, how much you want to deposit, and the rules for the card, such as spending limits. You can create multiple cards, meaning that you can create a card specifically for free trials (ensuring you never pay for a subscription where you forget to cancel a trial), you can create card(s) for children with €X amount deposited into it (ensuring safety if they want to purchase something online on their own), and many other use-cases. This is actually the initial scope of what PayBX was supposed to be and do, but was later changed out for the current scope due to issues in finding a card issuer. The card issuer problem looks like it’ll be solved by mid-2022, opening up for building out and offering this feature to users of PayBX in a future release of the application.
As for our other B2B products, we’ll start with an update on Bilr. Starting November 1st, there’s a stream of updates coming out that’ll greatly improve the product. The first release is scheduled for November 1st, then the second comes out December 11th, and the last one in late December / start of January but not yet scheduled. These add a lot of new functionality to the application, such as trust accounting (client credits tracking), entirely custom invoices, improved UI/UX for line entries, timer rehaul, standardized Power BI reports, setup wizard for QuickBooks API, and a brand new finance focused dashboard, to name a few highlights. These releases will be supported by a brand new website that’s being developed in Webflow (our new CMS of choice), a new and fresh logo (Bilr name remains — only icon, font and color will change), and a marketing push with a decent sized and scaling Google Ads budget and new salespeople being hired to sell the product into law firms in US, UK and India.
There’s also ExpenseCore and the ongoing bank deal, who we’re still going through contract negotiations and due diligence with. The product is being enhanced week-by-week while we close out the remaining requirements in the bank’s security procedure, which has been grueling and intensive. If it all goes well, we hope to have the phase 1 of the implementation live as a pilot towards the end of the year or start of next, which if successful would allow the product to be more broadly adopted by this institution in new phases thereafter. As an indication of size, this bank is classified as an SIFI, or systemically important financial institution, and getting the deal over the line would be an incredible achievement which would lead to future opportunities not only within the bank, but with other institutions as well. Underneath the ExpenseCore umbrella there’s also ExpenseCore Fund, previously known as Resolvr. We’re about to begin a new campaign to market and sell this product through the onboarding of new sales agents targeting hedge funds and private equity firms in the US.
And lastly, Digital Shares is not being focused on for the foreseeable future until the aforementioned products are fully out the door and scaling to the degree we intend.
The importance of the B2B products for AXPR is the buy back and burn function. And yes, we realize this isn’t and can’t be the end-all-be-all for the token. However, as B2B licensing sales hopefully scale with the release of the new Bilr version, the closing of the bank deal, and ExpenseCore Fund sales efforts — the goal is to increase the amount of AXPR being bought back and burned by a large amount, equal to 5% of new sales revenue.
We realize there have been delays, but we are confident in delivering a great product in PayBX that’ll improve the utility of AXPR and increase its daily usage. We’re still here, and we’re not going anywhere. We’re going to deliver and we know that we’ll get this right.
