Here’s the edited transcript of our editor Rethabile Mohlala and Lorien Gamaroff, Founder and CEO of Cent Bee’s recent interview about Centbee, Digital Cash wallet and payment platform which is changing the game in mobile payments. The company is owned by Centbee Holdings, is a digital payments company established in 2016 with an ecosystem built on blockchain technology to facilitate seamless, cheap global transactions through mobile phones. The have raised over £2.5 million in Seed funding since 2017 and have 10 full-time staff members on our team.
Lorien Gamaroff: Okay yes. So send me it is a company that is trying to leverage the original idea of bitcoin which is a low-cost digital cash system and…
Rethabile Mohlala: Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: specifically one that’s regulatory compliant. It’s very important that we put that in there because as you know, with Crypto Crypto today has become all about digital assets that get traded on exchanges and that they are not, they’re not held by any centralized institution and and therefore things like your customer and money laundering and all that kind of stuff. When it comes to crypto it is kind of thrown out the window. and so it’s very important to always differentiate between the crypto industry, the cryptocurrency world
Lorien Gamaroff: of millions of Cryptocurrencies, all of them being traded on exchanges. All of them are trying to be decentralized. And when I say that word, I’m using it in the sense of being outside of any sort of regulatory, per view, any kind of law, enforcement, anything like that. That’s what Cryptocurrency has become. And unfortunately Bitcoin itself. And there are even multiple versions of Bitcoin but the main version of Bitcoin, the original version of Bitcoin which is what sent B uses. That was always meant to be a low-cost cash system that could comply with all the regulations around many transfers and all that sort of thing.
Lorien Gamaroff: So, for a long time now I’ve been wanting to build a company that makes it possible for young people. And for anyone really, although our target market is youth. The youthful market of teenagers up to and including students Is to allow them to be able to make digital cash payments for things like uber, or airtime or electricity. Using digital cash but without having to have a bank account or credit card or anything like that. And so that was what the whole idea of Saint B was to create a mobile wallet. Where you could store your cash, your digital cash. Not your life savings. Just in the same way, you have your leather wallet, and you have a bit of cash in your leather wallet. You have some small amount of money in your digital wallet, your mobile wallet. And then with that cash, you can now go and spend it on all the things you need.
Lorien Gamaroff: And one of the slogans, we use for for the teenagers and the youth market is to activate your lifestyle where the you If you don’t have credit cards or anything like that, you can still go and use uber or buy from ubi eats in a top of your phone and you can just do it if it listening and very, very cheap playing very quick. So that was the whole idea around Bitcoin, at least sent me and also why we’ve been very determined to, to remain on the original version of Bitcoin, which now today is labeled BSV on the exchanges.
Lorien Gamaroff: I can explain what those symbols as letters mean.
Rethabile Mohlala: Hmm.
Lorien Gamaroff: And so we then provide this digital wallet. We also make sure that we follow all the rules and regulations, and we work closely with the regulators. We do all the right things around, many laundering and knowing our customer and we are providing that service now to a global base of people around the world.
Rethabile Mohlala: Yeah. Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: as meaningless. It’s again, one of those phrases that have been embedded in the crypto world. And now people think that the point of bitcoin is to eliminate the banking system, but of course that’s not true.
Rethabile Mohlala: Well interesting. So, where do you see that? The
Rethabile Mohlala: In South Africa because there is still this pushback where people say that it’s fraud is my money saving stuff like that. And then and then what’s the plan for for Saint B to, to change that kind of a thinking, you know,
Lorien Gamaroff: Yes, sir. My prediction around crypto is very Pacific. I think that eventually the regulators will come down on these exchanges but also you know when it comes to the ownership and transfer of these assets, regulators are going to want to have visibility on that and accountability. And also I think that eventually,…
Rethabile Mohlala: Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: Although, you know, people can be crazier than you think for longer, I think eventually people are going to realize that there is no fundamental value in any of these CRYPTOS. And really, they’re not much more than poker chips at a casino that might be fun for making money,…
Rethabile Mohlala: Hmm. Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: but inherently have no value until you sell them and get rid of them. So I think that ultimately crypto will fail and all these exchanges as well will not exist in their current form where they allow people to just buy and sell all these hundreds of CRYPTOS. But I think that the future for the original Bitcoin Bsv as a digital cache system, I think is very bright, not only because of the cash component. And that’s of course what we’re interested in, but as a network, just like the Internet was a network that at first was really just for email. I became this world that we have where we use social media, e-commerce and video streaming and all that.
Lorien Gamaroff: The Blockchain, the Bsv blockchain also is a network with these interesting properties that make it possible to do all sorts of novel things. So I think that eventually what will happen is that all these CRYPTOS will fade away and they’ll be a single blockchain. Just like we have a single Internet network, there’ll be a single blockchain network, which is the Bsv Blockchain and around it,…
Rethabile Mohlala: Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: original version, The original Bitcoin and it will then not only be on top news, be developing applications for it. But I think that enterprises and even governments will require that, you know, that businesses use it, because it is very good for security, or very good for integrity of data integrity, and also,…
Rethabile Mohlala: Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: maybe for supply chains. So, they seem to be nowadays coming along with many, many different uses. Cases for a data network in the form of a blockchain and the only and you only need a single blockchain just like we only need a single Internet and that blockchain that is the one that is scalable. That can actually, you know, reach everybody and perform and that is fixed. In other words, it doesn’t change randomly. Like all these other Cryptos are doing, they just randomly change things.
Rethabile Mohlala: Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: And the protocol, the actual design
Lorien Gamaroff: Um and also those that that blockchain that is compliant, so that allows regulators to have oversight on the transactions that are occurring. I think that regulators and governments will eventually require businesses to use the blockchain. Also in commerce, it’s really great because it makes tax collecting very simple. We’re in a single transaction. If I buy something at Willy’s, let’s say it’s possible to immediately pay the tax man on that transaction without having there to be a, you know, an audit and all that sort of thing. So my future for blockchain, the blockchain I think is bright and exciting. I don’t think it’s going to be something that governments tolerate. But I think it’s going to be something that governments require and…
Rethabile Mohlala: Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: and the language around a regulation of these things. I think it’s going to change. I think it’s not going to be any more of these conferences when governments and regulators are talking about how to regulate bitcoin or blockchain. I think they’re saying, “How do we now use blockchain to enhance the regulatory controls and to, to increase the performance and the efficiency of all that?” So I think that’s what’s going to start happening. And I already see it happening. Especially when I go to these conferences. I was just at the Reg Tech Africa in Lagos conference. and gave the Code. And that’s what I said. I said that, you know, that they should start looking at how to use Blockchain and this is a government level and a regulation,…
Rethabile Mohlala: Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: how they can use BLOCKCHAIN to, like I said, enhance or increase the performance, or the efficiency of the existing regulatory processes.
Rethabile Mohlala: Yeah. So I’m learning to notice that you are currently working with a number of local chain stores. How did the relationship come about?
Lorien Gamaroff: Well, having relationships with merchants is difficult, you have to go and meet them and you have to convince them that they are customers out there that are willing to and wanting to spend bsv. And that’s difficult…
Rethabile Mohlala: Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: because it is still early and because the world, you know, has taken a long time to think about Bitcoin as a cash system. You know, you know these other versions of Bitcoin like Btc,…
Rethabile Mohlala: Mmm.
Lorien Gamaroff: you can’t use them for cash…
Rethabile Mohlala: Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: because they’re so expensive and take forever. So the world has been very slow to look at blockchain and Bitcoin as a cache system. So not many customers out there, not many users out there are thinking about spending it. So going to a merchant and saying, “We’ve got some customers, they’ll ask, how many customers are you going to bring us?” and obviously we don’t do that. And so it’s been difficult to convince merchants to accept Bsv. But luckily, there are other ways for us to allow our users to spend at these merchants. And so what we do in the wallet right now is we provide vouchers or gift cards. So if you go to a store like Pick and Pay you can purchase a 500, rand pick and pay voucher with sent me and then you can go and spend that at Pick n Pay that’s what’s given us this opportunity now to provide many,…
Rethabile Mohlala: Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: many merchants around the world. We’ve got I don’t even know how many hundreds not thousands of merchants. Now from the east west from North and…
Rethabile Mohlala: Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: South America to Asia. China, Australia, and everything in between, where users around the world can now purchase gift cards, or vouchers, and spend them at the store. Fact, I’ll just in London last week and I went to Sainsbury’s and I used my sent wallet to shop at Sainsbury’s.
Rethabile Mohlala: Yeah. So I’ve checked your website, you know, the website you mentioned that allows you to send money quickly. No tedious process and stuff like that. I mean when you send money through, send me. Does it go through one of the top five banks in South Africa or how does it work?
Lorien Gamaroff: Yes. So one of the features we have now in the wallet is to be able to send money directly from your wallet directly to bank accounts or mobile money accounts or cash collections in many countries. A lot of East West African countries, also, Europe, UK. And we’ve got some new countries coming that I’m busy working on. And so what we do is we don’t use banks, we use the blockchain as the rail. And then what we do is we move the bitcoin as we enter the country. And we then convert that with our local partners into local currency and with that, we then purchase and then deposit that money into the bank accounts.
Lorien Gamaroff: So we don’t skip the banking rails, we skip swift and all the traditional money remittance rails are no longer necessary. And we use a very cheap blockchain to do very cheaply, move money, cross-border and the fees really that we charge are the fees for the switch from into local currency. And so and it’s very quick because B is very quick, you know, within a few seconds you can get money cross-border and then within a few minutes we can then convert that into local currency into positive user accounts.
Rethabile Mohlala: So, he said that you paid fees on the Vsb. To make these transactions.
Lorien Gamaroff: Yes, the way Bitcoin works is. That’s a very low amount is, is paid to the mining network, which is the transaction processing network.
Rethabile Mohlala: Hmm.
Lorien Gamaroff: BSV has the lowest fees because it is scaled, it has giant blocks that can translate, and processes transactions very quickly. And that again, is the original intention of bitcoin. The original intention was for it to be massively scalable. In other words, it can have millions of transactions per second and at a very low cost. I mean less than one cent, you know, less than a hundredth of a cent even. And so by using the blockchain rail, it means that transactions are extremely cheap.
Rethabile Mohlala: Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: The other time, the costs are larger than you would expect, you know, like a dollar or two which is what we charge at the moment because the partners themselves are having to do a conversion from the bitcoin sv into local currency. And that’s quite an expensive process if we didn’t have to transfer the money from BSV and convert it into local currency. And if they just received the…
Rethabile Mohlala: Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: Then we’ll say that that remittance transactional cost less than one cent. Then the user can now go and spend that in their sent wallet and buy the fool to the full value of what the Bitcoin was transferred. So if I send you a hundred rand to Nigeria, you’re going to get the full 100 rand. And you are going to be able to spend that 400 rand on goods and services that we’ve supported in Nigeria. So, it’s an excellent alternative to remittance. Whereas instead of now having to send money into bank accounts and pay the dollar or two, you know, because we try that rate other remittance companies obviously charge more than that. But what we can do is we can charge the sender, one less than one cent. If that’s the case then they can go and if you receive it can spend the full amount. So it really is a fantastic alternative to cross-border remittance being able to finally use Bitcoin for what it was intended to be, which is a global cash system. That’s what makes it
Rethabile Mohlala: Okay. Okay, How does it make money? Because you just said that, let’s say, you send a hundred bucks to Zimbabwe.
Lorien Gamaroff: Yes.
Rethabile Mohlala: How does sin make its own money? Because most banks normally make money on fees and then how do you guys make money?
Lorien Gamaroff: Yes. So we charge fees on what we call the value-added services and so if you are converting rands into BSV for your wallet, then that’s us a value-added service that we can charge a fee on. Also, with many of the gift cards and…
Rethabile Mohlala: Okay.
Lorien Gamaroff: vouchers that we sell inside cent b, we also can charge fees on that. So that’s because now we are providing another value-added service and then charge fees when we do the conversion from into local currency for the remittance business. So the actual BSV transaction is cheap and we don’t have fees that only the mining net does and of course, it’s very low. But the value added services. So if we can create any other kind of value around that transaction then we can justify a small fee.
Rethabile Mohlala: E.
Rethabile Mohlala: Okay. Okay, so in terms of spray spreading the gospel of what you guys at same b, marketing wise, what is the strategy? What is the plan to take this product to the market?
Lorien Gamaroff: Yes, that is always difficult and always very expensive, especially because we have a user base and…
Rethabile Mohlala: In. Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: So you can imagine advertising is extremely expensive, but ideas working with us and…
Rethabile Mohlala: Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: she has some great ideas here locally where we can reach out to students. We are thinking of doing some student keeps, what we’re called campus activations, where we go to the universities, and we set up a booth and we show the students we’ve done this before. A few years ago we did this at UJ and it was very successful…
Rethabile Mohlala: Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: Because really that’s our target, you know we want to go to the students, we want to show them how easy it is to use and…
Rethabile Mohlala: Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: we’re hoping that at the end of the day, Be does have a kind of viral reach in the same way. What?
Lorien Gamaroff: The same P is more than just a wallet. It is a social networking app so you can then send money to, You can chat to your friends and you can and you can send money to your friends. And we’re so we’re hoping that there’s a, perhaps a viral element that we can leverage. Of course,…
Rethabile Mohlala: Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: we’ve got our social media channels but you know as soon as we go into paid advertising, it becomes exorbitant. So we hoped to do it small, hoping to reach out to strategic audiences. Like I…
Rethabile Mohlala: Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: Steve students of the best, they’re all on campuses and so they’re highly concentrated. We go to the cap radios and we can talk about it and also you know very importantly we also want to set up courses not really courses but maybe educational forums so that students can join us and…
Rethabile Mohlala: Mmm. Yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: not just so that we can market saintly to them. But we want to be able to teach them about 10 and how they can, they can learn about it and perhaps even become entrepreneurs in their own rights using blockchain. And so that’s kind of how we’re going to do it.
Rethabile Mohlala: You yeah.
Lorien Gamaroff: We tackle the campuses we’re going to bring education and and and learning and and we’re going to tell students, how, how to use it. Hopefully, the word will spread
The Interview ended 👋
