“Throughout the years we have accumulated an unparalleled mix of knowledge about crypto payments and traditional finances. This naturally leads to an identification of opportunities and innovative solutions that are striving to bridge and utilize the benefits of both worlds.”
Mitja Hegler, NAKA’s Chief Operating Officer
Innovation is a long road
It’s impossible to have a future without innovation. Crypto is the living proof of this statement, because the whole industry is always trying to find new ways to become useful, going from financial solutions to something that can have an impact on people’s lives.
NAKA believes in innovation, after all, we started creating tools for a widespread acceptance of crypto as a payment method. This is deeply related with NAKA’s ambition of promoting financial inclusion and guaranteeing that even the unbanked population can manage their financial life.
But what were the achievements that made NAKA so sure about its project?
Before there was NAKA, there was Eligma, the company, and GoCrypto, the product. This predecessor to NAKA was responsible for the introduction of pioneer payment solutions, bringing crypto payment acceptance mainstream to European businesses, as well as elsewhere. The ease of digital wallets and web POS was demonstrated by GoCrypto products more than anyone else’s.
We have mastered payments, we have demonstrated that crypto is an efficient, secure, and free alternative to traditional institutions and the way they do business. Reflecting on that journey is the first step to understand why we have evolved to become NAKA and have focused all our efforts on payment issuing innovation. We want a path that best reflects the vision of Satoshi Nakamoto (NAKA’s namesake) of a financial system that isn’t reliant on the heft of institutions to provide people with financial autonomy.
Let’s take a look at how payments paved the way for the NAKA Ecosystem.
It all started with Elipay
Can you imagine a world where card, crypto and digital payments can all coexist? We can too, but we only envisioned it after Elipay, with the addition of a whole suite of products that included user-oriented solutions like Elipay and Elly Wallet, as well as merchant-oriented offerings like WebPOS, ePOS integration and POS terminal integration.
This initial solution was developed for merchants to showcase how easily, instantly, and safely crypto payments can be accepted at physical stores alongside traditional payment methods. And it was a game-changer. The proof of concept included the development of a crypto wallet for iOS and Android. We effectively proved that we could build a solution that appealed to both merchants and users. This success attracted additional wallets to the acceptance product, with tens of millions of users to join, like Bitcoin.com and Binance Pay which altogether support more than 60 different cryptocurrencies that buyers can use to complete the payment at our locations.
But how does it work? This web-based solution can be used on any device with internet access and the possibility to display QR codes. Merchants can access payment archives, daily account statements and FAQ.
What about the POS? By integrating into the most widely spread EPOS cashiers in targeted countries we made our solution more user-friendly and removed the necessity to log into a separate web-based solution.
Integration is simple with only a couple of API calls bringing the new-age payment method in traditional EPOS cashiers. It can be integrated to all Cash Register types: managed by the cashier personnel as well as self-checkout. While brick and mortar remained our main focus, we also developed a solution for online stores that ensured custom integration, as well as plugins for WooCommerce, Magento, prestaShop, Opencart, osCommerce and CS.cart. All of this was made available to merchants for easy acceptance.
The Elipay solution for users was later rebranded to Elly Wallet. The Elipay solution for merchants, though, was later rebranded to GoCrypto, a soon to be world-renowned brand.
Welcome to the BTC City ™
Ask anyone about GoCrypto and there is a huge chance that they will remember the BTC City™, one of the largest business, shopping, entertainment, recreational and cultural centers in Europe.
Merchant adoption quickly expanded and the capital city of Ljubljana became the globe’s friendliest crypto city with the highest concentration of crypto accepting merchants worldwide. Once the majority of merchants started accepting crypto payments, we registered for a Bitcoin City trademark.
To date, over 2,200 different branches in Slovenia accept crypto transactions, a large part of them in Ljubljana. The latter has positioned Slovenia’s capital as the benchmark for crypto adoption. All in all, the solutions we developed are used by over 3,450 branches worldwide.
In addition to Slovenia, our payments acceptance solution is available and customized to work in over 70 countries worldwide. Today, sites are active in 40 countries. This is due to the fact that the system ensures that traders are not exposed to any fluctuations in the value of cryptocurrencies, as they receive settlement in the local fiat currency. If they wish, they can of course also choose to receive the settlement in their preferred cryptocurrency.
The BTC City trademark is already registered in 59 countries worldwide, displaying remarkable adaptability even in economies remarkable for being underserved by traditional institutions.
The Holistic Crypto Network
After years of operation, GoCrypto became the fastest growing crypto payment acceptance network in the world. The solution has been widely tested and adopted. It was our first major success. Others would follow. We have compiled a list of some of the milestones we’re the most proud of at the end of this article.
In the process of all this work, Eligma, the company, realized that crypto needed to coexist with the solutions that people already relied on. The decision was made to develop a holistic payment system that combines all payment methods in one solution. Our ultimate goal was, and it remains, to help merchants and customers. We want to disrupt the market, not people’s livelihoods. For this purpose, Eligma enlisted all our local partners and started collaborating with a number of entities that could help us create that product.
Card providers were integrated (Nexi/SIA, Payreex/Finaro, Elavon, Global payments, Teip, etc.), as well as digital payment providers (Valu, mBills, Flik, BTC Gift Vouchers, Twint, Alma, etc). By doing this, we proved a holistic system could work. We proved its advantages. We invested and started to closely work with the company Lab4Pay from Slovenia (in the domain of the entire Balkans) and the company Done4You from Belgium (in the domain of the entire Benelux) to fasten the expansion, as well as a number of distributors all over the world.
This was the expansion that illustrated our new mission, our solution for the gaps left by traditional institutions in the way an entire system operates. At this stage we also elevated the current crypto payment solution for what we partnered with Bitfinex and jointly developed a solution that supports BTC on Lightning and USDT on wallet-agnostic multichain payments. This strategic partnership allowed us to truly expand our technological solution throughout Switzerland with a city-wide holistic payments solution in Lugano for which we are closely working with a Municipality. El Salvador was the next step, and for this purpose, we also opened local branches in the mentioned countries.
All of this activity led us to understand we had to be fully compliant. There was no way we could make this solution work without a perfect legal record. We acquired a number of licenses and permits, such as "Virtual Asset Service Provider in EU”, “SRO affiliation in Switzerland”, “Bitcoin license in El Salvador”, “ISO 9001 (quality management)”, “ISO 27001 (information security)”. We are not done and are constantly in the process of obtaining new licenses and permits in line with applicable regulations in our targeted countries.
If this seems like an immense body of work, that’s because it is. It meant years of working in the field of holistic systems. All of this experience provided our team with a deep understanding of all the shortcomings and problems of traditional systems, largely unchanged for decades. The team’s experience integrating this solution all over the world changed the company’s outlook.
It was time to develop a solution that was more ambitious and more deeply impactful. Traditional financial and banking institutions are leaving behind 1.4 billion people in some of the areas where financial support is the most needed, leaving people unable to access the basic services we have all come to rely on to build wealth and financial stability. Even in the richest areas in the world, millions of people can’t even get access to a bank account.
This is how NAKA came to be. There was a need for more than payments. There was a need for a new Network, where users are in custody of their own funds and decisions, while retaining the legacy that got us here. A full holistic solution was the only way to achieve the vision of Nakamoto.
The future is NAKA
Regulation changes. People's behavior changes. GoCrypto had its own life, and its own trajectory. It included many things that the new mission didn’t require, such as its own currency, as well as a dedicated wallet. We knew NAKA did not need to replicate GoCrypto, nor would anyone benefit from it. Thus, a completely new Ecosystem had to be built on the learnings and experience of the last decade, but with a strong focus on the future and brand new objectives.
NAKA will build a new financial Ecosystem, with new UX and new appetite to integrate regulatory and traditional practices, focusing on the gaps the traditional actors are failing to address. The unbanked, the underbanked, high inflation markets, those left behind. This starts in the LATAM region.
For that, we needed additional team members, a new brand, and a brand new initiative to expand on what we mastered before with GoCrypto.
NAKA has created a full-scale Ecosystem that allows both businesses and individuals to operate outside of the closed loop of traditional financial operators. This will allow anyone to access the simplest and most essential services in finance, regardless of whether they have a bank account, a credit score, or even the ability to meet any of the excessive expenses that participating in the current system imply. We are offering an evolutionary blockchain payment Network, and a dedicated self-custodial payment Card, as well as a complete payment ecosystem for businesses.
The NAKA Card is a fully customizable payment card. It’s connected to a custodial or non-custodial wallet (both options available) and we want businesses to issue it themselves. We want merchants and companies to reach all of their customers. In countries like El Salvador, about 70% of the population are unbanked. By providing the NAKA ard to their customers or users, Salvadoran companies and institutions will allow them to finally achieve the autonomy to pay at will and have control over their personal finances.
The NAKA Network is how we ensure that our technology remains secure, efficient, and compatible with existing hardware. We are starting on Poligon, but the vision is multichain. The NAKA Network will always be fully compatible with EMV standards, which allows virtually universal compatibility since EMV is universally supported across all point-of-sale (POS) payment systems that cater to Europay, Visa, Mastercard, and other mainstream payment networks.
Installing the NAKA Network requires no additional training or hardware from merchants, and the NAKA Card is the same.
These are the products and services that will be the backbone of this company moving forward. A solution that integrates instead of excluding, that brings financial assistance to everyone, regardless of what traditional institutions choose to do. A solution that completes the current system and deals with its real failings to improve the lives of all.
You can read more about the NAKA Ecosystem here.
If your company is interested in issuing your very own NAKA cards, you should get in touch.
Looking back at our achievements
More than half a decade building GoCrypto has provided us with ample experience, such as:
Elipay Crypto Web POS
This initial solution was developed for merchants to showcase how easily crypto payments can be accepted at physical stores alongside traditional payment methods.
Elipay Crypto Wallet
Development of a crypto wallet app for Android and iOS to showcase the functionality of crypto payments in our infrastructure.
Elipay Integration into ePOS cashiers
By integrating into most widely spread EPOS cashiers in targeted countries we made our solution more user-friendly and removed the necessity to log into a separate web-based solution.
Merchant on-line onboarding
An online self-service portal for crypto merchant onboarding. Developed to enable a faster spread and adoption of the GoCrypto payment network without the need for the sales team to intervene.
BTC City™
The holistic crypto payment infrastructure was thoroughly tested in BTC City, one of the largest business, shopping, entertainment, recreational and cultural centers in Europe. We also registered the BTC City trademark.
Eligma Labs
Eligma Labs d.o.o. (Ltd.) is a spin-off technology company that provides various products, solutions, and services related to the blockchain and its various manners of implementation.
Lab4Pay and Done4You Investment
With a crypto solution developed and made available in over 70 countries worldwide, we expanded our services to a holistic. To expand faster we invested in Lab4Pay and Done4You ensuring that the Balkans and Benelux, respectively, have full service, as well as many other distributors.
TEN31 neo-bank application
Development of a unique application for a specific client, allowing users to buy, sell and pay with crypto. It combines traditional banking with cryptocurrencies and enables deposits, withdrawals and transactions free of charge, anywhere in the world, as well as virtual IBANs
Merchant Dashboard
Developed to provide merchants and users with usable and powerful products. The dashboard provides an overview of all transactions and received payouts to ease the accounting work. We added advanced analytics, filtering and export possibilities for transactions made at GoCrypto, Elly POS and any other clients that required a white-labeled solution.
Binance Pay and Bitcoin.com integrations
We added integrations to some of the biggest crypto wallets to allow for seamless experiences for users of different platforms.
Soft POS with GoCrypto pay
To further spread the use and adoption of GoCrypto, we integrated our solution into a soft POS application. The GP Tom app was developed by Global Payments, the world’s largest provider of payment services, with whom Eligma strategically cooperates.
Holistic POS
The Holistic POS is a cutting-edge payment software designed to seamlessly integrate various payment methods, including cards, cryptocurrencies, and digital payments. This comprehensive solution offers a user-friendly interface, ensuring a seamless payment experience for all users.
Holistic eCommerce
We have created a product that shares similar attributes with our Holistic Point of Sale software tailored for brick-and-mortar stores. This innovative solution seamlessly integrates cards, cryptocurrencies, and digital payments, offering a unified experience.
Tenants and Product Configurability
Our software solutions have been designd with a modular architecture, offering extensive configurability to cater to specific market requirements, white-label partnerships, and unique point-of-sale environments.
Product White Labeling
We enabled white-labeling of all individual products (which includes various merchant and user-facing products, back-office tools, and materials) as required by individual clients, fullfilling their needs.
Bitfinex Pay Integration
Through our partnership with Bitfinex we enabled currency based payments on our Payment POS applications. We now offer payments with Bitcoin on the Lightning network and Tether on the Polygon, Tron and Ethereum network.
GoCrypto NFT Store
A revolutionary platform that harnesses the power of smart contracts to redefine ownership, creativity, and real-world rewards. The NFT store is fully backed by our GoCrypto 2.0 technology bringing to life fully decentralized payments.
Open Infrastructure for payments
By constructing Crypto cities, we are converting existing out-of-date infrastructure into a sophisticated smart POS system infrastructure with integrated crypto payments.
NAKA Network
The NAKA Network is a blockchain payment scheme that executes payments using smart contracts, performing both the payment and the settlement simultaneously.
NAKA Holistic Payments
NAKA’s point-of-sale technology enables connectivity with any leading card acquirer, payment application, and payment scheme, including its flagship product, the NAKA card.
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