SA startup Centbee launches app to send bitcoin cash to contacts on your phone

SA bitcoin wallet provider Centbee yesterday announced the launch of the beta version of a bitcoin cash wallet that makes it easy to send bitcoin cash to friends.

Centbee allows global consumers to acquire, hold and spend Bitcoin with retailers and other merchants. The Centbee wallet is now available in the Google Play Store and the App Store. The wallet provides access to bitcoin cash (BCH) which is an upgraded version of Bitcoin (BTC), the legacy cryptocurrency.

The news follows Centbee’s announcement in January that the startup had received an undisclosed amount in equity investment from blockchain research and development firm nChain Group. At the time the startup said the Centbee Wallet will be available in early 2018.

Read more: SA bitcoin wallet provider Centbee announces funding from nChain Group

SA bitcoin wallet provider Centbee has launched a beta version of its bitcoin cash wallet that makes it easy to send bitcoin cash to friends

In a statement yesterday Centbee said the app has been in alpha testing for several months. It said users had confirmed that the app’s most useful feature is its ability to send Bitcoin cash to friends by simply selecting from their phone’s contacts list.

Centbee said in the alpha version of the app, users used a demo money called Testnet coins to try out the app and its features. In beta, users can transact using real Bitcoin cash (BCH).

Speaking to Ventureburn today Centbee co-CEO Lorien Gamaroff attributed the later than expected launch of the wallet to “largely technical” issues, adding that it had taken longer than expected as his team were not happy with initial iterations of the wallet.

While he could not provide Ventureburn with the exact number of users that were involved in helping the startup to test the alpha version, he said it was about “a couple of hundred”.

The startup won’t charge users any transactional fees to use the wallet, users will be charged a bitcoin mining fee, which Gamaroff said is set at a fixed fee that is currently set at 14c a transaction.

He added that the startup does however plan to soon launch other products — including merchant payments systems, vouchers and a global remittance service, from which it would generate revenue from. He expected these to be launched by early next year, as soon as partnership agreements with retailers were finalised.

The vouchers would be available for purchase from retailers and would allow consumers to buy bitcoin without having to go through an exchange.

Because of Know Your Customer (KYC) obligations that the startup must fulfill, customers that bought such vouchers would face certain limits as to the amount they could purchase. These he said are currently set voucher purchases totalling about R3000 a day and R10 000 a month.

Featured image: Centbee co-CEO Lorien Gamaroff (Supplied)