OmiseGo

Cryptocurrencies use cryptography to secure and make transactions private and the protocol also controls the creation of additional units of the currency.

OmiseGo is an e-wallet and payment platform that allows people to carry out real-time, peer-to-peer exchanges and payments and it basically wants to make it cheaper for users to send and receive money and exchange currencies regardless of whether they have fiat money or cryptos. This encourages financial inclusion.

Its access will be made to everyone starting Q4 2017. You can read more about the OmiseGo crypto on its whitepaper here.

OmiseGo offers low fees, faster transaction time than Ethereum and easy cashouts and cash-ins. There is no bank account needed to exchange money on the platform and the company has nationally-licensed full reserves.

Its currency is OMG coin. The coin price was $8.21 (each OMG) and the market cap was $807,024,726 as of this writing.

Market and business

The platform targets mainly the remittances market – and that market is valued at $442 bln in Asia, according to 2016 data. The platform can facilitate real-world commerce in real-world use cases by making services such as payroll deposits, payments, loyalty points and rewards, B2B commerce, supply-chain finance, loyalty programs, asset management and trading, and other on-demand services, cheaper and faster.

OmiseGo also wants to extend to digital gift cards, tokenized fiat, mobile banking, asset tracking, gaming, and messenger platform markets.

With this platform, you can easily switch between various digital currencies – such as ETH, BTC, and others -- and fiat money.

The system will generate profit basically by holding OMG tokens that will be used to validate the Proof of Stake network of OmiseGo. Token holders will thus be rewarded and the more transactions are done on the blockchain, the more the rewards to token holders.

OmiseGo wallet

The wallet gives users access to Omise payment gateway, real-time trade settlement, credit, and virtual cash card. Users can top-up over the counter and through direct debit.

The wallet system allows companies and users to create their own styles and designs or embed custom apps. They can set up a loyalty and reward points program and accomplish payments and transfers.

The wallet helps users to unlock real benefits of mobile commerce because different wallets can communicate with each other (it uses distributed open protocol).

History

Omise was founded by Jun Hasegawa, who is the current CEO, and Donnie Harinsut (the current COO) in 2013, and is a venture-backed company that operates in Thailand, Japan, Singapore, and Indonesia. The company was selected as the “Fintech Rockstar” in November 2016 by Forbes Thailand.

Its ICO crowdfunding started on June 27 this year and ended on July 27 this year, raising a total of $25 million to add to the $25 gotten from traditional venture capital investors. 65 percent of the OMG tokens were distributed to investors, 20 percent to reserve; about 10 percent went to the team, 7 percent to scalability research, 62 percent to staffing, 6 percent to marketing and 4 percent to consultancy. The company issued about 140 million tokens or OMGs in total and there are about 100 million tokens in circulation.

Historically, Omise has been backing Ethereum and collaborated with Hydrachain, Golem, Tendermint, and Cosmos, among other companies in the blockchain scenes.

The team behind the company

OmiseGo comprises of Ethereum developers such as Vitalik Buterin, Gavin Wood, and lightning network creator Joseph Poon. The list of advisers includes Vitalik Buterin, who is the Founder of Ethereum; Dr. Gavin Wood, who is the Co-Founder of Ethereum; and Julian Zawistowski, the Founder of Golem, among other cryptocurrency industry experts.

Some of the key investors in OmiseGo include SBI Investment, SMBC, Ascend Capital, SMDV, Golden Gate Ventures, and East Ventures.