When two pilots were made redundant during Covid, they turned their attention to something completely different that they had in common: cryptocurrency.
Craig Duffield and Jitendra Maharaj, cofounded Pay It Now New Zealand, the first company in New Zealand to create a layer-2 cryptocurrency payment gateway.
“Pay It Now aims to be the Stripe of cryptocurrency payment systems,” said Maharaj.
Duffield and Maharaj noticed a gap in the market for simple and secure cryptocurrency payments for store and website owners. They saw that transacting in crypto was slow and expensive to use, making small purchases like buying a coffee unaffordable.
To fix these challenges, they created their own “Layer 2 blockchain” solution to allow customers to complete transactions in less than a second without any expensive transaction fees.
A blockchain is a distributed database or ledger shared among the nodes of a computer network. As a database, a blockchain stores information electronically in digital format.
Pay It Now is a payment, reward, and data storage system that utilises blockchain technology to achieve instantaneous transactions with low fees and secure data storage that provides an alternative to traditional cloud storage.
Historically, high transaction fees and slow processing times of transactions have made it unattractive to use cryptocurrency payment platforms as a form of payment, explained Duffield.
Pay It Now has cut down transaction times to instantaneous and charges a fee of 0.5% per transaction. This technology makes them faster and cheaper than their competitors, and also more safe and secure.
“Pay It Now helped a customer recently who had some cryptocurrency in a different cryptowallet of hers for a long time, get transferred to her PIN App, and she was then able to use it to purchase goods at a PIN Merchant with it. She loved that she was able to finally use her cryptocurrency and purchase something easily and quickly,” said Duffield.
And the market is growing. According to Crypto.com, cryptocurrency users are expected to reach one billion by 2022, an increase of 178% of users in 2021 compared to 2020. Payment services are a 1.6 trillion USD market worldwide, but less than 1% of those payments are in cryptocurrency.
Alongside the Pay It Now payment system, Maharaj, Duffield, and their operational and development team have also developed the Pay It Now network App and the native Pay It Now Token (Pay It Now’s cryptocurrency).
The company is working to bring new and improved services to their range. These include Pay It Now Data: a secure and safe data storage on blockchain service; Pay It Now-FT: an NFT platform that allows users to trade NFTs; and Pay It Now Marketplace: a venue where merchants and consumers transact using only cryptocurrency.
Duffield explained that while blockchain technology is well known for its crucial role in cryptocurrency systems, it’s also being used by some well known brands.
“De Beers group introduced the world’s first blockchain-backed diamond source platform at scale.
“This is because blockchain innovation guarantees the fidelity and security of a data record and generates trust without the need for a trusted third party.”
The founders say Pay It Now is an environmentally sustainable option. It currently uses 99% less energy than Bitcoin mining, using the same amount of power per year as a high-end gaming PC.
The team intends to become one of the market leaders in cryptocurrency payments, rewards, and data storage.
To help them reach the next phase of growth and expansion of their business, they are running an equity campaign with crowdfunding platform Pledge Me.
