The Interledger Community 🌱: David Benoit

Accrue: Commercial Viability and Required Infrastructure for Direct and Flexible Payout Options — Grant Report #2

David Benoit — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 02:24:26 +0000

The inner workings of the company are almost entirely fully baked. We have completed each of the stated goals in our initial proposal.

Working while the kids play

Progress on objectives

As outlined in our original proposal, we are happy to share that each of our initial proposed deliverables have been completed:

Determine partnerships - done
- Money movement - done
- Treasury management (foreign exchange, etc.) - done
- KYC processes - done
- User bank deposit information - done
- Identification of bank alternatives in target markets - done
Determine contract matrix - done
- how/if the partners identified above can work together - done
- What development/integration work must be performed in order to automate operations - done
Identify regulatory issues - done
Identify regulatory requirements - done
Identify costs - done
Identify operational requirements - done
Identify dependencies - done
Create implementation plan - done
Create delivery plan - done

Key activities

We have been able to identify regulatory issues around this service, as well as relevant regulatory requirements in all initial target markets.

We completed a prototype implementation of user bank deposit information, but because our original partner could not service all target markets, we started over with implementation with a new partner. This is now complete.

We have fully identified operational requirements, dependencies, and have fleshed out the implementation and delivery plan.

Communications and marketing

We have not discussed our work in public at this time. While we have proven money flow, public discussion has been limited due to resource and time constraints.

We have published our initial commercial site at sumassembly.com.

What’s next?

We have happily accomplished all of our intended goals; next, we intend to pursue further grants and further funding to effectively bring our work to the public.

We believe that we have proven commercial viability. We have moved money on extremely low cost, high-efficiency routes. This business is able to run as a healthy, revenue-generating company that provides real value to the community. We hope to secure funding for this business that will allow us to pursue customers and new contracts within the next year.

What community support would benefit your project?

At this moment, we are looking for “beta tester” commercial users of our solution.

We’d like to enter into a commercial agreement with this potential partner to prove implementation of our solution and create a case study.

We are thrilled with our progress, and excited to see this through!

Money! It happened.

David Benoit — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 13:52:49 +0000

This week we actually moved real money across borders into real bank accounts.

Behind the simple concept of what we're building, there is a complex matrix of partnerships that needed to be established.

We're so excited to finally have these partnerships in place. More will be needed, but this is an amazing start.

Who wants to help test? (EU, UK, CA, US for now. More soon!)

Accrue: Commercial Viability and Required Infrastructure for Direct and Flexible Payout Options — Grant Report #1

David Benoit — Tue, 17 May 2022 16:50:22 +0000

The project continues apace. While we have verbal agreements in place with multiple partners, the biggest challenge we have at this time is the responsiveness and timeliness of these large organisations. Getting contracts, NDAs, and live credentials has proven to take longer than hoped.

Project Update

Price negotiations have been a big win for SumAssembly - we’ve asked for the moon and gotten halfway there. All cost assumptions in our original estimations have been lowered.

In doing our research on the partner ecosystem, we found that a few partners we initially identified were not as robust in their offering as other companies that we were not at that time aware of. Doing extra research at this stage has gotten us to a better selection of partners at lower cost than initially thought possible.

Progress on objectives

For this research project, we defined success as identifying and engaging partners to serve significant geographical areas while addressing regulatory, cost, and operational requirements.

By this definition, we have had quite a bit of success. Payouts are hard not because the ultimate movement of money is hard; rather, it’s hard because of all of the partnerships and requirements that are necessary. Nobody in payments does anything alone, and forming these important relationships takes time. This has been by far the most time-consuming part of the project, but we have had success in getting to the “verbal agreement” stage with almost all partners.

We have determined ideal partners and secured verbal commitment in the following categories:

Money movement
Treasury management (foreign exchange, etc.)
KYC processes
User bank deposit information

We have completed money movement, treasury management, and KYC workflows and ensured that these flows pass regulatory and compliance checks. KYB workflows are still outstanding.

Key activities

We have been able to identify regulatory issues around this service, as well as relevant regulatory requirements in all target markets.

Our next challenge is to fully identify all operational requirements, dependencies, and the implementation and delivery plan.

Communications and marketing

We have not discussed our work in public at this time. Once we have proven money flow, we will market our services.

What’s next?

During the remainder of the grant period, we intend to more fully identify bank alternatives in target markets, as well as have a fully formed view of the contract matrix for this project to work. We’ll identify how partners work together, and what development and integration is necessary in order to automate operations.

What community support would benefit your project?

We would like to be connected to anyone in the creator community who works with “payout platforms” (any platform that pays its users out) so that we can interview these users to better understand their customer experience.