Wyre announces switch from Bitcoin blockchain to Ethereum and launches first WeChat and Facebook blockchain payment tool

Blockchain payments startup Wyre has announced a payment tool for WeChat and Facebook. Wyre CEO Michael Dunworth gave us more information about Wyre Bot, which uses WeChat and Facebook Messenger to issue business invoices.

Introducing Wyre Bot

Wyre is committed to using open source blockchain technology to provide cross-border payment services for large enterprises and payment companies. Since the spring of 2016, Wyre has provided APIs and client dashboards to customers in the United States, China, Brazil and other regions. At the end of last year, Wyre successfully obtained $4.5 million in Series A funding, and several Chinese companies participated in the investment.

According to Wyre’s website, the company also claims that it has been processing more than $1 million in payments per day since last fall.

On Wednesday, May 24, Wyre announced:

“We’ve created Wyre Bot – the first payment tool for WeChat and Facebook.”

Using bot platform Recime, Wyre Bot was created to help users generate payment invoices on WeChat and Facebook, as well as respond to customer support questions via chat.

Dunworth said:

“The bot is currently focused on paying invoices. We are just beginning to experiment with tying WeChat’s communication channels to more commonly used channels in the West, such as email/Facebook.”

He said this would reduce friction for Chinese companies when sending invoices.

Wyre Bot currently supports U.S. dollar payments to China, which the company says is Wyre Bot’s core focus right now.

Dunworth elaborated:

“We will be opening this dollar corridor shortly and we are already seeing some demand for the new currency.”

Additional currencies may include the euro, pound sterling, Mexican peso and yen.

In addition, more features may be added to this bot in the future, such as the ability to perform payments directly in the bot and multiple invoices for one request.

Another expansion plan of the company is to consider adding support for more social platforms such as WhatsApp, Slack, Line and Viber.

How Wyre Bot Works

Using a standard social chat window, the supplier first sends a message with the transaction details to the Wyre Bot. The bot then generates a PDF invoice, which is then emailed to the supplier and the person who pays the invoice.

According to the Wyre announcement, the invoices are hashed, time-stamped, and stored on the Ethereum blockchain to prevent fraud, which Dunworth explained is a way to “give customers confidence that the invoice they received was generated through our platform and not from a fraudulent email address.”

He added:

“If that hash is on the blockchain, then the user can search for it and see that it is indeed there. What they received in the email is a SHA256 hash of the invoice.”

Currently it is not possible to use the Bitcoin blockchain, but it may be possible in the future

Dunworth went on to explain why they switched from the Bitcoin blockchain to Ethereum. He said Wyre wanted to record these transactions on the “Bitcoin blockchain, but the cost of doing so was too high .”

The high transaction fees on the Bitcoin network prevented them from timestamping every hour, but their customers needed to do so. "So either we timestamped once a day, which meant our users couldn't verify their invoices that often," or "we used a blockchain that was cheaper. So we chose the latter."

However, Dunworth said they may also use the Bitcoin blockchain in the future.

He said:

“RSK is super interesting and if RSK will get implemented and make the Bitcoin network more cost-effective, we might come back.”