From a cryptocurrency up to a Central Bank Digital Currency, one solution does it all
*This is a living article, it will keep breathing as long as Tangem is developing, new lines and paragraphs will be added every little now and then.
The major obstacle facing digital assets and cryptocurrencies is adoption, and no adoption will take place sufficiently unless you eliminate the hassles which token and cryptocurrency holders face. There is almost an average of 12 different e-wallets that the significantly active crypto or digital asset adopter has used over the past couple of years, regardless of the number of platforms and relatively tech sophistication that one needs to have to comfortably adopt crypto or digital assets.
Digital assets and crypto need to be as hassle free as using a banknote.
And here where a solution comes into the scene; a company that pioneered the self custody solution and technology for seamless and easy to use grandma level of sophistication in crypto and digital assets. They were successful in coming up with a technology that doesn’t require any further knowledge than what already people are used to for a decade now. People are very familiar with using digital and mobile money, and most of the baby boomers already use e-wallet services and online banking for a long time now, nevertheless online trading of stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies through a lot of online brokers and FX dealers, in addition to online money transfer which is everywhere from Iceland to Africa, and from Alaska to New Zealand.
With that said, digital currencies and tokenised assets are no different in concept from and end user perspective only if they are offered in the same way somehow, when people don’t feel comfortable using something and they feel they need to go through a learning curve even if its minimal, they don’t feel safe or secured putting their money or assets in it. And thats the problem with crypto and tokens these days.
I personally don’t like calling them cryptocurrencies nor tokens, I prefer digital assets or digital money/digital currencies, it makes more sense rather than the fancy names that confuses the regular person on the street who has totally nothing at all with cryptography or network security and hearing something like DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) and Blockchain (which is nothing but a fancy name for a spreadsheet or a database) will not do but to push him or her away and makes him or her more confused more than he or she is already with everything that is going around in everyday life.
Tangem Cards: Chip-To-Chain
Tangem is a company which produces self custody cards which can be considered as a bank note, and thus making digital assets and digital currencies more appealing to end users whether individuals or institutions to transact in crypto, tokens, and digital assets in a seamless way no different than dealing with a traditional mobile wallet or mobile banking app if not even easier. the cards connects to smart devices with NFC (Near Field Connection).
Tangem produces cards for major cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ether/Ethereum, Lumen/Stellar, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin etc.) for retail and individual end users.
Cards are sold on their online shop at Tangemcards.com
They have cards for Bitcoin BTC, Ethereum’s Ether ETH, Ripple XRP, Stellar’s Lumen XLM, and Bitcoin Cash BCH in both original and fancy Bird Collection. In addition they have some partner cards as well on their shop like Cardano (ADA) Cards, LOBSTR Vault Cards for LOBSTR Wallet users, and Swiss Key BTC Cards for Swiss Key users. (October 2020: Tezos Cards are now available)
For those of you who are familiar with Nodle Cash Cards, guess what… they are Tangem Cards.
The technology is ledger agnostic which means one can develop Tangem Cards on any blockchain/network/ledger.
And they are extremely quick and easy to use and crypto holders can custodise their currencies on a stylish cards in their pockets as well as easily transact (send and receive) from other cards or to their card’s address (the card is the wallet) where the sender to the card from an exchange or any other crypto platform/wallet can send funds, crypto, or tokens directly to the card address (which is the wallet) as well the card can send to any blockchain wallet (just paste the wallet address of the receiver in the destination on tangem app), as well receive funds from any blockchain wallet (juste send or share your card wallet address with the sender in a message, email or whats App etc), and its super secure as the keys are generated on the chip on the card and never leaves it. the firmware has been audited by Kudelski Security.
The cards are specifically manufactured for Tangem by Samsung.
The cards are tamperproof, they are rated IP68 being waterproof and dustproof, they have been evaluated a rating level of EAL6+ which is the highest security level on the wallet market.
To make it even easier Tangem now supports PayID the unique payment identifier adopted by financial leaders, replacing complex account numbers with a simple ID that works across any payment network and currency, in this case replacing the complex wallet address with a unique ID.
Who is doing what with Tangem ?!
CBDC: Central Bank Digital Currency
The Central Bank of Cambodia through Soramitsu developed on Hyperledger Iroha a CBDC Payment Solution targeted at 18 million retail users and integrated Tangem Cards for signing transactions, Cross Border Payments and Interbank Settlement. The project is potentially to be adapted in Ukraine as well.
https://bank.gov.ua/admin_uploads/article/Makoto_Takemiya_Soramitsu_CBDC_Solution_in_Cambodia.pdf
The government of the Marshall Islands to issue their State Sovereign Digital Currency (SOV) on Tangem Cards as physical bank notes.
Gold Tokenisation
DIGIX tokenised Gold on Tangem Cards (DIGIX Branded) where 1 DGX = 1gram of Gold, and DIGIX cards are accepted as bank notes for payments and settlements in Singapore.
This update about Tangem Gold was added on the 23rd of Sep 2020
“Even more now Tangem launched Tangem Gold, you can reserve your Gold Cards that stores your representation of ownership of physical gold stored in custody, they have two issuers now issuing Gold Cards; MintX in Hong Kong and AurusGOLD in the UK, you don’t wanna miss this one, check it here:”
POS Point of Sale and Payment Solution
CycleBit a japanese company producing POS terminals that accept Visa, Mastercard, Samsung Pay, Android Pay, Apple Pay, and Tangem Cards, they even issued CycleBit Cards (Branded Tangem Cards).
Even more, Retailers, restaurants, shops, and small kiosks on the streets can turn their smart phones, tablets, or iPads into a POS terminal and start accepting crypto, digital assets, or tokens for what they sell. Simply by receiving transfers from the customers’ cards to theirs. retailers and shops can purchase the Pro Bundle which comes in a 5 cards; BTC, ETH, XRP, XLM, and BCH from the fancy bird collection and accept payments in these five cryptocurrencies.
Retailers can even become Tangem distributers or sellers, they can order bulk quantities of Tangem Cards at discounted prices and resell it a retail price, even more they can rebrand the cards after their brand names and sell them in the market.
Another way is to develop loyalty/reward points or gift vouchers for your shop, store, or restaurant on Tangem Cards branded after your business.
Anti-counterfeit
NewBalance on Cardano launched RealChain where NewBalance issued Branded Tangem Cards to authenticate their expensive footwear collection.
EMV Payment Solution (Open Loop Payment Solution)
Tangem cards are getting Visa Certified almost next month and will be officially launched in the fourth quarter of 2020 or first quarter of 2021.
The following video is a live demonstration of payment with crypto (USDC) for a coffee/latte at Starbucks over Visa Rails.
Closed Loop Payments
Banks can develop their own closed loop payment networks for their clients by developing on Tangem Cards any kind of digital or mobile money.
Some commercial African banks are already piloting Tangem cards for their closed loop payment systems for their clients.
Slice and Dice
Tangem offers Tangem Developer Kit; a package of 5 Tangem Cards unprogrammed and unloaded, where you can build and programme the Tangem card the way you want, download the open source SDK and programme the cards the way you want and come up with your own solution. Explore the different functions and use cases for your own project or solution. build your specific application with the cryptocurrency of your choice, you can as well embed the Tangem SDK in your application. The cards are fully reusable.
Native mobile SDKs for iOS and Android are available on GitHub.
Universities can utilise this by providing students and candidates with Tangem Developer Kit as lab resources for practical exercises of developing blockchain and digitalisation applications across different use cases and industries.
Even blockchain and digital development firms can provide their solutions to their clients using Tangem, the same way consulting firms and development companies provide their clients with solutions built on top of Microsoft Azure, Dynamics, AWS, SalesForce, etc. Blockchain and digitalisation agencies can provide solutions and products to their clients built on Tangem. Whether your clients are exchanges, banks, governments, shipping, logistics, supply chain, retailers, Tangem can provide a solution for them.
Here is one company doing so, Flowency a design agency providing services to blockchain startups, they did this case study (Start2Coin) for Sweepay a payment and distribution services company launching the Start2Coin soon in Europe where you can pickup your bitcoin rechargeable cards off the shelves of shops at metro station, subways and on the street.
Capabilities
The technology is universal, it can provide solutions for:
- Exchanges for trade settlement and asset custody
- Cryptoexchanges to store, send and receive (transact) and custodize cryptocurrencies and stablecoins, ICO/STO/Token distribution (dividend distribution)
- Ticketing industry can do a lot with Tangem
- Gaming collectibles
- Retail & consumer businesses can use Tangem as an anti-counterfeit solution to authenticate products
- Loyalty points and gift cards
- Fintech players can use it for digital assets
- Governments can utilise the Tangem capabilities in so many solutions like citizenship and digital identity, national treasury and record offices. *October 2020: Tangem ID Cards are now available, check it out here:
Learn more about Tangem Identity Solution here:
What if …?
Now you might be asking yourself some questions like, what if I lose the card, what if somebody steals my card, what if the card is damaged, can I have pin code for the card, two factor authentication, can I white label Tangem, How to become a Tangem Reseller, what if, how can I, …..
Here you will find precise answers to all your questions on an end user basis, and technical basis as well, take a look.
Get Started
Download it now on the App Store
and on Google Play
Note (Only for China): If Google Play is not available in your country, you can download the compiled Tangem app from their GitHub repository: Tangem Binaries.
Makes sense ?…, makes a lot of sense.
I hope the Tangem guys when they read this article would be happy with it as well as all the others mentioned, as they have no idea that there is someone writing this piece of article about them. They will be reading it for the first time.
Thanks for reading :) I am happy you reached here, please let me know if you have any comments or questions or even any thoughts or feedback about the article.
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