New Airfox app beta now available & AirToken dApp GitHub repository [Announcement]
January was an extremely busy month for Airfox and the engineering team. Developers returned from their holiday vacations and got down to reworking a scalable architecture and improving our Android app, backend infrastructure, and Ethereum dApp. We are setting up the stage of the tech to be scalable and to start aggressive user acquisition in Q2.
New Airfox app beta available in Brazil
I’m pleased to announce that we have released the first production version of the Airfox app for Brazil in the Google Play store! I want to emphasize that this is a beta release, and we consider it our minimum viable product (MVP) for Brazil as the target market. We will be iterating from this base going forward, constantly improving the app and releasing new features.
This version of the app has three key features that are must-haves for a financial services app for the underbanked in Brazil:
- Recharging your own or another person’s phone
- Transferring money to another user within the app (a-la Venmo)
- Remittances
- Depositing cash into the app via Boleto at more than 40,000 locations across Brazil. Boleto is a very common and popular system in Brazil for paying with fiat currency, especially for the unbanked.
“Boleto Bancário, simply referred to as Boleto (English: Ticket) is a payment method in Brazil regulated by FEBRABAN, short for Brazilian Federation of Banks. A Boleto can be paid at ATMs, branch facilities and internet banking of any Bank, Post Office, Lottery Agent and some supermarkets until its due date. After the due date it can only be paid at the issuer bank facilities. Boleto can only be collected by an authorized Collector Agent in the Brazilian territory. All Brazilian banks, Post Offices (Correios) and Lottery Agencies plus some companies from the private sector have joined the system.”
Our product roadmap includes more key features that will be crucial for gaining market share and additional ways to spend funds in addition to mobile recharge.
Surrounding the app is a lot of engineering effort involved in onboarding, authentication, security, architecture, and laying the foundation for future features. Again, I want to emphasize that this is a beta MVP release of the app, and some screens are currently placeholders, such as the Profile tab. Every release going forward will be more polished with more features. By the end of the quarter Airfox will be well-positioned to turn on the engine of users and prepare to execute its aggressive plan to grow the user base of Airfox mobile users powered by the AirToken blockchain.
We invite everyone to try the app and give us your feedback. Let us know what you think at support@airfox.io.
AirToken dApp GitHub repository
Additionally, last week we pushed a version of the AirToken dApp to the Airfox github repository. Normally we wouldn’t release something unfinished, but to provide transparency and development progress updates we decided releasing it early would be beneficial for the community.
We are implementing the AirToken dApp UI provided by our design team and getting all features implemented and tested thoroughly.
Up next
There is still much engineering work to be done including but not limited to:
- Release the initial loan application feature in the Android app so that users can apply for and receive loans in Brazil
- Continue to polish the app to fix bugs, improve performance, simplify the UX, and finish missing features (like the Profile tab)
- Release a new version of the AirToken dApp that allows AIR to be sent to users of Airfox Android app or redeemed directly for airtime and mobile data. This is also a good tool for remittances.
The loan feature is quite complex and will require a lot of thinking to build properly. Using data gathered from the phone, we will be constructing our own algorithms to credit score and rate applicants. At first, Airfox will be providing capital for the loans. As the dApp progress following its 1.0 release, AIR holders will also be able to finance loans for users in Brazil. This will be an engineering and product effort that will continue throughout 2018.
Modern software development is an iterative process. The AirToken product suite will never be “finished”. We will constantly be listening and responding to the market, updating the app, releasing new features, changing things, improving our infrastructure, and making our app better fit the needs of our target demographic. We appreciate the community’s support as we move the product forward.
January was an exciting month, and the rest of Q1 will have many new improvements. We are excited that our first version is ready for public consumption, and even more excited for what the future will bring.
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