Yesterday, a partnership was announced that will make it possible to purchase gift cards directly in the Polkadot app.
These are gift vouchers in fiat money, which can be spent in more than a million stores, chains or e-commerce sites.
The partnership to bring gift cards to the Polkadot app
The partnership that made this possible is that of Raise and Parity Technologies.
The aim of this initiative is to make it easier and more rewarding for people to use their cryptocurrencies for everyday transactions. It will even be possible to purchase gift cards in the Polkadot app with just a few clicks.
Technically, it is the integration of the white label payment APIs from Raise’s gift card infrastructure within the Polkadot app. This allows gift cards to be purchased directly in the app, paying with Polkadot’s native cryptocurrency, DOT.
Moreover, it is possible to earn up to 20% cashback in DOT.
The role of Raise
In this way, Raise becomes a payment provider for the Polkadot mobile app.
Raise is an important payment provider in the gift card sector.
In fact, it is the largest gift card market in the US, offering users on-demand gift cards from over a thousand brands.
Additionally, the infrastructure is integrated directly into the PoS (Point of Sale) of many leading brands, providing a seamless payment experience while offering cashback on all purchases.
The company was founded in 2012 and has facilitated transactions worth more than $10 billion over the years.
Thanks to the collaboration with Parity Technologies, it wants to bridge the gap between the crypto sector and retail. Raise has ambitious plans to expand its presence in the cryptocurrency sector, with more blockchain integrations in the coming months.
In fact, the company is working on making its payment API available to all non-custodial Polkadot wallets in the future.
On the other hand, Raise’s mission is to innovate and improve the value transfer between consumers and companies.
Parity technologies
Parity Technologies is a major blockchain infrastructure company.
He works to create a shared creative open source legacy that allows people to create better institutions through technology.
Everything started on Ethereum, but later Parity focused on Substrate, an industry standard blockchain framework. It is precisely thanks to Substrate that it has created Polkadot, a decentralized blockchain metaprotocol that aims to connect and secure the different crypto ecosystems.
Parity was founded in 2015 as EthCore by Gavin Wood and four other people, and led the creation of the Polkadot project a few years later.
He is currently the main contributor to the Polkadot blockchain. The CEO is Björn Wagner, while Gavin Wood is the chief architect. Wood was also one of the co-founders of the Ethereum project.
The Polkadot ecosystem
Polkadot is a crypto project born in 2020 with the aim of creating a meta-blockchain that allows interaction between different blockchains.
This is a very ambitious project and very difficult to complete from a technical point of view.
For this reason, its development seems to be slow, as there is still much to be done and development in a decentralized environment cannot be particularly fast.
In fact, the release of the Polkadot app has not yet taken place, even though it is expected in the same third quarter of 2024.
Thanks to Raise, the app allows users to make purchases from US retailers using the native cryptocurrency DOT without ever having to leave the app. Additionally, Raise and Parity plan to expand these capabilities internationally by the end of the year.
DOT to pay for gift cards in the Polkadot app
However, the price of DOT has been suffering for a while.
In fact, it has fallen to 14th place among cryptocurrencies with the highest market capitalization, after previously being in the top 10. Now it capitalizes less than Shiba Inu.
After entering the markets in 2020, it was able to take advantage of the big bull run of 2021 and hit an all-time high of $55 thanks to a speculative bubble that then of course burst.
However, it cannot be ruled out that inflation will arise again sooner or later, or that the price may slowly rise back to that level over time.
Currently, the price is down 88% from its highs, with the price just above $6, which is not much higher than the bottom of the 2022 bear market. Moreover, the price fell further in 2023, so much so that it is only was above $4. since the end of October last year.
This year the price managed to rise to $11.5, but later stabilized below $6.5.
The reactions to the initiative
Commenting on the partnership with Parity Technologies, Raise founder and CEO George Bousis stated:
“For too long, cryptocurrencies and traditional trading have remained in silos. Raise published its first white paper on blockchain in 2015, which outlined a better way to enable customers to transact with businesses, but technological limitations prevented this evolution. Polkadot’s blockchain provides the necessary technical support to finally bring our vision to life. Together we make it easier and more rewarding for people to use their cryptocurrencies for everyday transactions. We couldn’t be more excited to be working with the Parity team and we look forward to demonstrating how cryptocurrencies can be seamlessly integrated with retail and e-commerce in the future.”
Parity Technologies co-founder and CEO Björn Wagner added:
“When I first met George and the Raise team in 2021, I was immediately impressed by their vision to unlock the use of cryptocurrencies in retail through their gift card platform. We have worked tirelessly together since then and I am proud of everything we have achieved through this integration, which will enable all DOT holders in our ecosystem to use their assets in traditional commercial systems. This partnership with Raise opens up a completely new audience for traditional e-commerce and this is just the beginning of what we have planned for the future.”