Social payments have become something of a norm these days, with folks in Singapore using Paylah as the most accessible solution for easily sending payments.
On a global scale, we have things like PayPal. However, PayPal kinda requires you to know the person you’re paying, or at least their email address.
A truly global solution to send money that can be spent without being tethered to the banking system is still something to be found. Libra promised to be that solution, riding on the global network that is Facebook.
Then I came across this tweet yesterday.
Interesting… if anything, I thought Square would have been well placed to do something like that, given Jack Dorsey oversees both Twitter and Square.
So, what is Dharma.io?
According to their official website, Dharma.io provides a limitless and borderless way to send and receive USD, without having a bank. You also earn interest on all USD received. In other words, a cryptobank.
Except you don’t actually send and receive USD, but DAI, a crypto stablecoin that is pegged to the USD.
Wait, DAI?
Yeap, DAI. Dai is a decentralised stablecoin that is pegged to the USD. But, unlike USDT, which is a centralised stablecoin owned by Tether Ltd (which kinda defeats the purpose of the spirit of crypto in the first place), Dai is not owned by any one party, and is collateralised with ETH (Ethereum), providing you with a truly trustless stablecoin.
Stablecoins play an important role in the onramp from fiat or other assets to cryptocurrencies.
So, how’d it go?
Anyway, the original intent of this post was to test out how easy it was to create a Dharma account and then send and receive Dai/USD to and from another Twitter user.
So let’s get to it.
Creating a Dharma.io account
Creating an account on the platform was simple enough. Register with an email address and password, and confirm your account.
You can also set it up using the official app using your iphone or Android phone.
Account set-up flow: Easy Peasy!
Transferring Dai from Coinbase
I had some random BSV (lol!) from the Bitcoin Cash fork from way back, that I’d left on my coinbase account. So I thought I’ll use that. I exchanged some BSV for Dai on my coinbase platform, and proceeded to send some Dai to my Dharma wallet.
It provides a QR code that you can easily scan to send the Dai across.
Again, easy peasy. Boom! My Dai appears in my Dharma account within a minute. The other great thing about it is, this cryptobank is also interest earning, and is immediately starting to earn interest, as can be seen from the screenshot below!
Okay, with my set-up now complete, I needed an accomplice that I could trust on Twitter, to test out sending and receiving Dai. I know Kevin from Turtle Investor is also a crypto junkie, so I reached out to him, to see if he was willing to test out Dharma with me.
He thought the idea of being able to send money via twitter was interesting, and so graciously agreed. He too, set up his Dharma account in a flash, and was soon ready to receive my transfer of 1 Dai via Twitter.
Linking Twitter account to Dharma
First, I had to link my twitter account to Dharma. Once that was done, I then went to ‘Send’, and I could choose to search either via twitter handles, or Dharma username.
Initiating payment
I searched for Kevin, and voila, his handle promptly appeared for me to select. Keyed in the amount, and the money was off!
Once the payment was made, I could even send him a tweet from within the app to notify him of payment. This is especially useful for people who don’t yet have Dharma, to be able to get notified so they can go claim it.
Kevin and I were chatting on Twitter the whole time, and his feedback was he got the payment, instant and easy. We both think it will be a stronger player if they could do this via more than just Twitter. Don’t get me wrong, I love twitter, and at 152M monetizable daily active users (mDAU) as at Q4 2019, that’s not a small number, but it is dwarfed when you compare them to Facebook.
Overall, the user experience was great, and I can see a use-case for small businesses and freelancers who conduct their business over Twitter, or makersand creators who want to make it easy for their customers to pay them with whichever is the most convenient mode of payment, without having to expose an email address.
It’s also great to see a constant evolution of products coming out to make crypto not just a speculative asset, but to really use the blockchain technology to bring value to the masses. The unbanked opportunity is huge (nearly 2.5B of the world’s adult population remain unbanked), and the next few years will definitely be very interesting for DeFi products.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, I got back the dollar.
If you’re interested in the crypto world, check out my other articles on bitcoin and how to securely safekeep them.
This sounds interesting. I’m just getting into the crypto game. Can you purchase this coin as a US citizen?
Hey Heather, glad you liked it. You can purchase Dai from anywhere. If you have an crypto exchange account that supports Dai, you can buy it. Let me know if you need help, I can point you to more articles
That is so interesting! There are so many ways to send money these days, it really is so easy!
I am amazed at how much money has evolved in so many forms on the internet. But I’m still lost when it comes to blockchains, cryptocurrencies, and the like. And now here’s another one. I guess I need to read up.
Passive income is the goal. This information is excellent and will help anyone trying to make more money
Oh cool, I hadn’t heard of this before. I normally just send money through Paypal.
Very interesting. There are more and more ways to transfer money coming out lately. Thank you for sharing. x
Seems like you can collect income from just about anywhere now in days. Interesting read on the latest ways.
It is crazy to me how many ways to transfer money. Technology is ever changing and creating new ways. This is really neat way to use social media to transfer money.
I am amazed at how much technology has changed the way we do money. The past 20 years has been crazy. I can’t imagine what the next 20 years will bring.
This is a new thing to me. So many different ways to send money.
sounds good…… it looks easy way for money transfer…… thanks for sharing.
This is really interesting. One has to wonder if Twitter is just the first platform and they have plans to try moving from there to the other more popular platforms like Facebook. Or if that idea is stalled by those in charge in Facebook land (being they already have their own payment set up on FB Messenger). So many questions!
This is fascinating! It’s great you could try it to see how it worked. Thanks for sharing the information!
Very interesting article. I too get confused with all that is out there. Thanks for the tips.
Thank you for testing this out and letting us know how to went! It’s very useful to have such an easy and efficient method of sending money.
This is really useful to know. Thank you for sharing!
wow. another feature! I havent heard about this before. will check this one out!
I am really amazed thanx for sharing I really dont know about many ways of sending money
In didn’t know about this app. My favorite money app y Venmo!
I have never heard about this before. It does sound interesting and looks like a great tool to use🤗
This is so interesting! Lots of social payments are available now but it’s always good to have lots of options.
Wow! This sounds interesting. I will definitely look into having that since I am so curious. This will definitely make life easy.