Crypto Goes Mainstream Inside Pundi X’s Innovative POS System with Peko Wan

Episode Overview

Peko Wan is the co-CEO of Pundi X, a pioneering fintech company that developed the world’s first crypto point-of-sale (POS) system. With Pundi X, Peko is leading the charge in transforming how retailers and consumers interact with cryptocurrency. Her role involves addressing the complex challenges that arise with the adoption of digital currencies, such as volatility, transaction speed, and regulatory hurdles. Under her leadership, Pundi X has introduced solutions like settling payments in stable coins to ensure merchants are shielded from crypto’s notorious price fluctuations. Peko has been at the forefront of educating merchants and consumers on how to embrace blockchain technology as a viable payment option.

Before co-founding Pundi X, Peko earned her MBA in international marketing and built a strong foundation in public relations and communications, working across various industries. Her expertise in crafting global strategies and fostering consumer engagement has been instrumental in Pundi X’s expansion and adoption of its crypto POS system. Peko has a passion for bridging the gap between traditional finance and the growing world of decentralized finance (DeFi). Her ability to communicate complex technological concepts in accessible terms has made her a key figure in bringing blockchain technology into the mainstream retail space.

Peko’s innovative mindset extends beyond payments. Through Pundi X’s Function X blockchain, she has spearheaded efforts to develop decentralized applications and expand the scope of De Fi activities. Peko is committed to building a comprehensive ecosystem where merchants and consumers can confidently engage with cryptocurrency. Her leadership has earned her recognition as one of the most influential women in fintech, driving the adoption of crypto payments on a global scale and setting the stage for the future of decentralized finance.

Episode Transcript

Kevin Rosenquist: Hey there and welcome to Pay Pod, where we bring you conversations with the trailblazers shaping the future of payments and fintech. My name is Kevin Rosenquist. Thanks for being here. Here’s a hot take for you. Crypto could be a divisive topic. Some people are all in touting it as the future of finance. Others think it’s fool’s gold. Some are in the middle somewhere and most don’t even know what the hell it is. But what if you could pay for products and services with your crypto? And what if you could do it at a brick and mortar? That’s what Peko Wan and the team at Pundi X are doing. They’ve built a crypto POS system that allows merchants to accept crypto payments from customers. Crazy, right? And I’m sure you have questions about how something like this could possibly work. Peco sheds light on how they’ve tackled concerns about volatility, security, and everything else that might make your eyebrows go up when hearing about a crypto POS product. Is it the future? I’ll let you decide. Please welcome Peco. When I spied on your LinkedIn a bit,  your first degree came from National Sun Yat-Sen University. Yeah.

 Peko Wan: Sun Yat-Sen University.

Kevin Rosenquist:  I was close. That’s good. Was your degree in English literature? Yes. And you also directed and acted in English plays. You were a member of the drama club. Was there anything in particular that drew you to English Lit and drama?

 Peko Wan: Well, I love drama. I love being a producer and director for the play, and that was my hobby in my high school. And then I take it to the university. So after I got into this university. I majored in English literature and it just happened that our professor, who is also the director of the English drama. So. Wow. So I just signed up and then I’m actor’s actress and also the director of a play. So it was quite fun.

Kevin Rosenquist: It’s an ambitious major for, you know, I mean, you know, just because English is not your first language. So, like, how difficult it was to embrace that as an entire major is, it is very ambitious.

 Peko Wan: Right. So I have been practicing a lot regarding the line, and I think most of us studying in Taiwan, if you are interested or major in English, you would try to improve your pronunciation, your speaking capability. And then I think the drama is the opportunity to practice this and then to a more advanced level. And I cannot remember all the lines, but at that time, we have been practiced a lot and then tried to speak as native as possible. But it’s not easy to be honest.

Kevin Rosenquist: I’ll bet. I mean, seriously, when I said ambitious, I mean like, that’s a tough one, that’s a tough one to go into. And, and,  yeah. I mean, was there, was there any particular part of it that drew you in that you were like, I really want to do this.

 Peko Wan: I think I just like acting my dream during the childhood. And then my mom said that,  acting won’t, you know, earn money and keep you keep your living, keep up with your living. It’s obvious.

Kevin Rosenquist: Very hard. It’s very difficult. Yeah.

 Peko Wan: It’s very difficult. You’re not like she said you’re not like Angelina Jolie or anything like that. And then you should give up as early as possible. So Chinese parents are very practical. And

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah.

 Peko Wan: And then. Yeah. So that’s why I am so into, you know, getting into acting during my university because this is the only time I can do acting, right.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, yeah. Before. Before real life. That’s why.

 Peko Wan: Yeah. Yeah.

 Peko Wan: It’s not ambitious at all. It’s just that I love acting. So I try to make the best use of my university life to do that. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: Well, if it makes you feel better. My parents are American, not Chinese. And I wanted to be a rock star. And,  they told me that wasn’t practical either, so.

Kevin Rosenquist:  okay. That’s what I tell you. Yeah. I saw you played.

Kevin Rosenquist: Basketball in college, too, huh? Yes.

Kevin Rosenquist: Were you. Were you.

Kevin Rosenquist: Were you pretty good?

 Peko Wan: Actually. I’m tall. My height in in the school. And then my best friend in in university. She loved playing basketball. And then she said, Parker, you need to join the team basketball team, because I need to win this. So. So I joined the.

Kevin Rosenquist: Team, right?

 Peko Wan: Yeah, because of my height. Yeah. So that was my first time to play basketball and yeah, I love it.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s awesome. Do you.

 Peko Wan: Still. I don’t reject any sports. I love sports.

Kevin Rosenquist:  nice. Nice. I do as well. So. Yeah, that’s awesome. So. So next you got an MBA in international marketing. So marketing, PR and communications has been a large part of your career. And. Right. And now you’re co-CEO of, of Pundi X, a company that’s working on the world’s first point of sale solution that will allow retailers to accept crypto. So with a marketing background, how different is it to market a crypto and blockchain company from other companies that you’ve done marketing for, especially given how many people just don’t really understand what it is. Still, you.

Kevin Rosenquist: Know. Yeah.

 Peko Wan: You’re right. We spent a lot of time to educate merchants, and especially when we start in 2018, not many merchants know basically know, merchants know. And then they have no need to accepting cryptocurrency. So most of the merchants that we had at that time were early adopters. And they are very, very excited about our technology and would love to adopt the solution. And for those people, they self-learned and they help us to improve the products. And for those we also go to store by store and then to ask merchants to adopt the system. We got a lot of rejection at that time, and then they have a lot of concern regarding what if I what if Bitcoin decreases value overnight and then my payment would decrease its value as well? And then how am I going to pay my inventory? Because when they sell Coca-Cola or they sell coffee, a cup of coffee will close. They will love to. They need to pay their rent. They need to pay their employees. And how could they tackle those type of issues?

Kevin Rosenquist: And that was actually one.

Kevin Rosenquist: Of my questions later on.

Kevin Rosenquist: So yes. So I’m excited to learn.

Kevin Rosenquist: About that too.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah.

 Peko Wan: So we know this issues because when we built this platform there are two major challenges. One is that Bitcoin is very difficult to be used as a payment because it takes a lot of time to confirm on the minute. And then second is that and a lot of people they don’t know about crypto, they don’t know about wallets, they don’t know about private key. They don’t know about setting up a wallet or just or buy crypto. And also the merchants has concern regarding the price volatility of crypto price volatility. So we need to resolve these three major issues. So first of all we started as a centralized platform that people need to have our wallet. And then they need to use our expert system which is the POS point of sale system that specifically designed for crypto. And then they interact with the wallet that we have,  published and designed, and it’s more like a centralized service. And also they have a cost we issues like a debit card, but it’s only available in our system. And then it’s totally a centralized solution. But the good thing is that you can actually have this confirmation done in less than one second. So you don’t need to wait for, for a long time. And also it is similar to what it was, what it is today for a lot of digital pay service.

 Peko Wan: So you have to download their app, you have to support their app. So people are used to, you know, decentralized solution. And then with the time goes by and we see that a lot of people, they use their own private wallet and they use all kinds of crypto wallets to, to pay. And then we decided to, take this transaction on chain and then to support multiple blockchain for the on chain transaction. So people just use their,  for example, trust wallet or MetaMask, and then they can pay at the merchants. So that would resolve this part for the transaction, because later on there are multiple blockchain. And then they offer a really, really fast speed of transactions. So that they don’t need to wait so long to until the confirmation and liking network also help. We support Lightning Network as well. And then for the price volatility we settle with the merchants in stablecoins. So when people pay in their Bitcoin or Ethereum we settle instantly based on the rate that they pay. And then those amount of money will be settled in the stablecoins, which is attached to the US dollar value. So the merchants actually receive stablecoins, not Bitcoin or Ethereum. That would help them to mitigate the risk of the volatility.

Kevin Rosenquist: Sure. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: That makes sense. What about the consumer? I mean, is there a I suppose there’s a chance that a consumer could come in thinking they had a certain amount of bitcoin. And then they’re like, what happened? Thinking that they don’t have as much as that. Is that a concern?

 Peko Wan: So basically when the consumer that comes to the store, they want to spend crypto, they know they have a certain amount of crypto that they can spend and they can actually just pay in crypto. So if you would like to pay Either You would just pay in Ethereum. And we have some cases that people just take their ledger to spend. So they take the ledger app which is a ledger live app. But they forgot to bring their hardware wallet, the ledger itself. So you have to, you know, take that hardware wallet together so that the transaction would happen. So there are some cases that we need to explain. And also the team on the ground need to explain how this wallet work and how the multiple blockchain works to the merchants. That’s what we just said. There are a lot of educations going on on site. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: you guys have been working on this, as I could tell, from almost seven years, at least from the company’s founding. What have been the biggest hurdles for you in getting a crypto POS up and running? Right.

 Peko Wan: I think the biggest challenges would be the regulation has been changed, like constantly. So we cannot commit a very long term service with our merchants because in some jurisdictions they were asked to apply license or registration to take crypto payment, or they can sell crypto because the device itself not only accept crypto as a payment, but also sell crypto. So they need to apply license in the countries where the laws has to apply. And then this is one. And then the second is that the technology has been involved very quickly. And you have seen  we started on the Ethereum blockchain. And then we see BNB smart chains coming up and then Trial Network and then polygon and then Solana. So you have to constantly integrate the blockchains. That was you know, the consumer prefers to use it, so that they won’t come to your store. And then the merchant when the merchant offer uh accepting crypto payment. But we cannot support a certain blockchain. So we have to look into integrate multiple blockchain. And then the downside of integrating multiple blockchain is that the merchant has to learn as well. Their staff has to learn as well. And this could be a issues Shoes. There are a lot of education going on, and also with multiple currencies that the crypto market has. Some people may just pay in a fake token. So there are fake USDt in the market and the merchant doesn’t know quite quite know. And then our POS device will accept the fake token. So to kind of like helping the merchants to avoid these type of issues, if they just have their own wallet, they might just accept whatever tokens that the customer pays. And then there’s no screening filtering those invalid tokens. Really good.

Kevin Rosenquist: Point. That’s a really good point. I didn’t think about that. Yeah. You could yeah. That you guys are sort of the gateway that keeps people from,  accidentally accepting tokens that aren’t real.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah.

 Peko Wan: And also for the,  there are some addresses, like blacklist addresses, that would label to be to be a sponsor for terrorist activities. We also block those type of addresses just to make sure that the merchants don’t get involved with this issues.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, that’s another great point. Yeah yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah.

 Peko Wan: They were just like oh I am accepting crypto. That’s from the criminal.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah yeah yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: So I have a Coinbase wallet and I can just use that directly at the point of sale.

 Peko Wan: Yes you can.

Kevin Rosenquist: Kind of kind of like when you use Google Pay or something like that. Similar to that.

 Peko Wan: Right.it will  for example, if you, if you have the tokens that we support like USDt, Usdc, BNB or bitcoin or Ethereum packs a pack we can support on multiple blockchain. So as long as you have those on those blockchain and then you have a gas fee to pay, then there’s no problem. It’s just like you are sending tokens to.

Kevin Rosenquist: To.

 Peko Wan: Another year, another wallet.

Kevin Rosenquist: But you have that again like we talked about. You have that layer of protection as the merchant to make. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah of course it is legitimate.

 Peko Wan: Yeah. It’s legitimate. And for merchants they have a dashboard. Not only you just see the machines, the point of sale device that we have basically they have a back end system. They can look at all their transactions from different blockchain on the dashboard so that they can track the payment very easily.

Kevin Rosenquist: Oh that’s great. So, let’s talk about this POS product. So if I go into a business and they have POS and I want to use my Ethereum to pay. So tell me, how does it work?

 Peko Wan: Right. I can show you a demo.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. For those of.

Kevin Rosenquist: You listen to podcasts, feel free to jump on YouTube and check this out. You can see the demo or the demos also on the Pundi X YouTube channel as well.

 Peko Wan: Right? Let me share my screen. So our demo, from  using Lightning Network to pay bitcoin.

Kevin Rosenquist: Okay. Yeah.

 Peko Wan: So you enter the amount that you need to pay. So in this case, this sample is $65. And then it shows the QR code. And for the user just scan and accept and that’s it. The yellow box means that it’s confirmed.

Kevin Rosenquist: That was it.

 Peko Wan: Yeah that was it.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s awesome. Haha.

Kevin Rosenquist: Wow, that’s even faster than you described. That’s.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah it is.

 Peko Wan: I think lightning that we’re really doing a really great job on as we speed up the transaction for Bitcoin.

Kevin Rosenquist: Wow. That’s awesome. So a side note, isn’t it funny how QR codes have come back so hardcore. Like they remember when QR codes were there and then they kind of went away. And then the pandemic and, and  digital currency really brought the QR code back. So I never thought that it would make a comeback.

Kevin Rosenquist: But yeah.

 Peko Wan: And recently we launched an in-store QR code solution. So the merchants, all the merchants need is to just post their QR code in front of their cashier, and then the user just scans the QR code. This is just the one QR code, but the user can pay through different blockchain, even Binance Pay, they can use Binance pay to to pay. So. So for merchants, we don’t need to spend a lot of time educating them. Like which blockchain it is. So the decision power will be on the consumer, because nowadays the consumer is smarter than the merchants. They know how to pay, right? So they just scan the QR code, they just pick up the chain, the blockchain they need, they want to pay and then the currency or any payment solution, and then they just complete the transaction on their phone. And both merchants and users or customers will receive the receipt when the transaction is confirmed.

Kevin Rosenquist: Wow. And then of course, as you mentioned, the merchants are being paid in a stablecoin or is it fiat currency as well, like you’re paying them basically in a fiat currency, right?

 Peko Wan: In some countries our franchisee will be able to help with the fiat settlement. So for example, like South Africa, they provide fiat settlements. So basically it’s our franchisee. They receive USDt Stablecoin as far as the settlement from us, and then they convert it into the local fiat currency for the merchants, and then they send to the bank the merchants Bank. So the next day you will get the settlements in Fiat when after you receive the crypto payment. So it’s very fast.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s incredible. That’s incredible. So I was on your site. Tell me about function X right.

 Peko Wan:  function X is a kind of like a project, the layer one blockchain network that we built for DeFi activities. So we because we started as a point of sales builder, a crypto point of sale builder, and then there are multiple blockchains that we need to support. So we thought it makes sense to build a layer one blockchain that supports multiple blockchain, and then to have some decentralized applications to run on that so that we can onboard the users after they first onboard from our retail spaces. And also they will explore more about advanced crypto activity like DeFi. So we use that network. We started this layer one infrastructure by introducing it as a third generation of internet. At that time, no one is talking about Web3. And I think when we mention it, it’s really, really early. And then we promote the concept that you should own your data and then, and then pandemic hits, and then we kind of like building it to have integrate more,  DeFi applications, this network. Does that include decentralized exchange, which you call margin X? They built functions as well. And also there are swaps available on this network. And also there are farm system called baklava. They also build on function x. So we kind of like to provide a variety of DeFi applications through function X to the crypto users, the more advanced users, so that we can run some experiments on this network and see how it goes before we take it to the masses.

Kevin Rosenquist: Wow. That’s really cool. That’s ambitious to do that as well. To do the, to do the platform as well now.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah.

 Peko Wan: Yeah. Anything that we implement like blockchain we support on function X and then we can take that to the poor system. So it’s easier that our the layer one blockchain team to implement first. And then and then we take their results or learning and then take it to the POS device. So it’s a very much integrated effort.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, it’s kind of creating its own ecosystem, if you will, there. That’s really that’s really cool. That’s really cool. I wanted to follow up on something that you said before. You were talking about, you know, setting up wallet and stuff like that in crypto. I feel like a lot of people are. Well, some people are anti crypto, but there’s a lot of people also that just don’t understand it. And setting up a wallet can be kind of intimidating. You know like with the crazy passcode and, and like all the stuff that you have to do with it, especially if you think about maybe older people who aren’t the most technologically, you know, in-tune people. What is the biggest barrier in your mind as far as getting people to adopt blockchain technology or, or just accept that it’s a viable, you know, form of, of a viable payment option?

 Peko Wan: Right. You rightly point out the difficulty and then the challenges, because when we were on the front line with the merchants, the merchants told us that there were a lot of people still there. They don’t know about crypto. And then it is very difficult to educate them, especially when the merchants would like to give away like an NFT or crypto loyalty points to their customer, their loyal customer, and then they have to go through the wallet setup process sometime in the bar or in the pub. And those customers were drunk. And then you cannot create a wallet in this type of situation, right?

Kevin Rosenquist: No, that would be tough.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. And then I.

 Peko Wan: Remember the merchants said they even write down the private key for them and then they feel so wrong about knowing their private key. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: So.

 Peko Wan: So when we hear about this type of feedback and then we, we think of if we can design a solution that would just it’s a no brainer. So to create a wallet. So what we have created I think we launched about last year. Uh this one. Can you see that?

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. Yeah yeah.

 Peko Wan: So this one is the car we call it PS car, and it is a self-custodial custodian wallet and it supports multiple blockchain. And there’s a private key inside this course.  We actually are the R&D project we did with Infineon. Do you know Infineon? It’s the semiconductor uh company. They are the chipset. So inside this card there’s their chipset and then we use their Sakura blockchain security solutions to build this car. And then we want to make it very affordable. It’s just like,  if you customize for 500 cars, it’s just you cost you like $11 per car. So you can customize 5500 of them. And depending on the merchant how much they would like to sell to their customer, they can sell. They can give it away to their, you know, loyal customers. Yeah,With this car, you can deposit tokens to the cars and then make them as loyalty cars like VIP cars. So when they get this card, there’s a private key inside. You don’t need to write down a private key. And then you just tap to interact with our POS system. And also later on when you go back home, you want to see your balance.

 Peko Wan: You download the score app to see the balance. However, if you need to transact, you need this card. It’s just like your hardware wallet, and you need to tap it to authorize the transaction with this card. Because the private key is in this card, not in your phone. So that will solve the issues that the communication for the first time users who use crypto. So it’s just like they get a gift card and then they just use the points inside there. So yeah, it’s pretty much it. And we also do the very things that that my CEO or co-founder like feel very absurd. But I managed to convince him that because this card  is needed, a lot of people will ask me what happens if I lose this card. And then we tell people, if you lose the card, you lose, you lose the key. And it’s just like the cash. You lose the cash inside the key. So we don’t recommend you to store a lot of the large value of token inside.

Kevin Rosenquist: Or like having a gift card, a physical gift card in your wallet or. Yeah, that if you lose it.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, just lose it.

 Peko Wan: Because,  before we launched this car, we did some testing with the real users, and then we set up pinnacle. It’s just like the same car that you have to enter your Pin code to use your SIM card. But if you exceed three times of trials and there is still and you cannot get into your SIM card for this car, then it will lock to your asset permanently. So a lot of,  most of the time, like 80%, 90% of the time people forget their Pin code. So we just remove this layer and then to make it super easy for people to adopt because,  yeah, we don’t want to add an extra layer of that. So this is very helpful for the first time user. But if you become an advanced user then you can choose to use ledger. You know a more advanced or secure solution to protect your own crypto, especially if you want to store a large amount of it in a certain place. Then you need to buy something more advanced. But this. This is the first time a user to get into crypto.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, that could be a great, you know, intro,  introduction for people to crypto and maybe like, you know, kind of take down some of the some of the barriers or at least the, the mental barriers that people might have when it comes to the technology overall.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yes.

Kevin Rosenquist: Well very cool. I’ve also before we go, I want you to know that I did convert some of my crypto into pundi. So don’t let me down, okay? I want to retire. So I need that to go up in value very quickly.

 Peko Wan: Right?

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: No pressure.

Kevin Rosenquist: I.

 Peko Wan: I sense a lot of pressure here. Well, we work very hard for that, but yeah, the altcoin season hopefully is coming. I think the interest rates are very crucial to drive up risky assets. So yeah. Look forward to the ride.

Kevin Rosenquist: Well, Peko, thank you so much for talking with me about Pundi X. It’s great , it’s a really intriguing system and I’m really excited to see where it goes from here. So thanks for being on the show and letting everybody know about what you guys are doing.

 Peko Wan: Thank you so much for having me, Kevin. It’s my pleasure to be here.