Itโs funny what business leaders can and canโt tell the press.
Cointelegraph caught up with Alexander Drummond, co-founder of crypto-enabled payments company GatePay, at the 50th edition of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week. Drummond was one of several crypto entrepreneurs presenting his company on stage at the CV Labs event on Tuesday.
Drummondโs pitch for GatePay goes something like this: retail customers should be able to pay for products with any means of exchange they want, and retail stores should be able to handle it. Offering checkout support for different credit cards and popular cryptocurrencies, GatePay is a piece of software that point-of-sale distributors push to their merchantsโ checkout systems to support all kinds of credit cards and cryptocurrencies.
Merchants designate their banking details and receive all their revenue โ from Mastercard swipes to BTC transactions โ as conventional bank deposits. Merchants get cash, not crypto, and this is what a vast majority of merchants want at the end of the day.
โIf i want to pay with Bitcoin, i choose that option and scan a QR code or tap my phone via NFC,โ Drummond explained. โItโs really the same as if you were using ApplePay or another non-credit-based payment rail.โ
When we asked Drummond what the future held for GatePay, he let loose an interesting tidbit:
โWeโre about to partner with the largest or second-largest payment network in the world. If people have a typical Android phone, theyโre likely already tied into this ecosystem. I can only tell you that weโre close to announcing a collaboration with Koreaโs largest consumer electronics manufacturer.โ
Drummond specifically did not say โSamsung,โ but that is indeed Koreaโs largest consumer electronics manufacturer, and it has an associated payment network called Samsung Pay thatโs compatible with a wide variety of Android phones. If and when GatePay can make the formal announcement that the collaboration is finalized, it would represent a major momentum boost for this crypto startup.
But weโre still waiting for that formal announcement.
Samsung did not immediately reply to Cointelegraphโs request for comment.
