in Englisch ;)
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 29, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Glance Technologies Inc. (CSE:GET) (OTCQB:GLNNF) (FKT:GJT) (“Glance”, the “Company”, “we”, “our”, or “us”) today provided the following update from Chief Executive Officer Desmond Griffin.
Dear Glance shareholders:
We are building the future at Glance. Our technology is right at the forefront as people change the way they pay for goods and services.
I am writing to reassure you about Glance’s great prospects, given the misinformation (which we have repeatedly corrected) and negativity you might have read from a former officer who was terminated in February and who is now a dissident shareholder.
A big part of our go forward plan includes the new version of the Glance merchant app. We are devoting significant resources to this development and expect it to launch in the second half of fiscal 2018. The new version of the Glance merchant app is important as it enables merchants to quickly download it directly to their own mobile devices.
This should allow us to accelerate the sales process, moving from a direct sales model to predominantly digital sales through online and tele-marketing, targeting markets in a number of geographies with minimal overhead. We plan to expand this technology into online purchases and e-commerce by leveraging our anti-fraud technology for online merchants suffering high fraud rates.
Blockchain and cryptocurrency
We are working diligently on our cryptocurrency technology and are assembling what we believe is a strong team on this front. This blockchain-based rewards platform will allow Glance merchants to reward and provide deals and incentives to customers based on smart contracts.
To accelerate the progress of this app and our core technology, we have strengthened our team with the addition of employees with valuable experience gained at other leading technology companies.
Our plan is to provide a loyalty mechanism that allows Glance users to spend accumulated rewards within a larger marketplace. We also anticipate that by rewarding Glance users with our token, we will enable everyday individuals to get involved with cryptocurrency and hopefully encourage widespread adoption.
We believe blockchain and cryptocurrencies are fundamentally transformative technologies, providing significant opportunities for the early pioneers in this space. According to Coinschedule.com, over $3.7 billion USD was invested in cryptocurrency initial coin offerings in 2017. That large influx of capital investment should accelerate the advance of fundamental blockchain platform technology as well as applications and more widespread adoption of the technology in the next few years.
Our second quarter so far
The second quarter of 2018 has been our most successful quarter to date in terms of customer expansion and adding new merchants. We have signed more than 140 locations, and added our largest restaurant chain to-date, including our first significant U.S.-based restaurant chain. In May, we also hosted a very successful blockchain conference in Vancouver, building recognition for Glance’s brand and capabilities.
Over time, we expect that increasing usage of our app, combined with new features, will deliver a growing stream of monthly revenue from merchants through a tiered Software-as-a-Service subscription model. This will be in addition to our ability to generate new revenue from transactions, advertising, promotions, and consumer fees for premium features.
With a disruptive new technology like ours, it takes time to establish critical mass. However, once critical mass is achieved, it can become viral very rapidly. We are working towards that tipping point, having carefully developed and proved the technology locally (in Vancouver), just as I did at PayByPhone, and are now beginning to expand internationally.
Licensing
Euro Asia Pay Holdings Inc. (“Euro Asia Pay”) was the first company to seek a licensing agreement with Glance when they approached us in the spring of 2017. We announced our letter of intent with Euro Asia Pay in April 2017 and the definitive agreement in October 2017.
Euro Asia Pay was keenly interested in us because it was aware of PayByPhone’s history of success with mobile payments. Our team, with myself in the lead, developed a solid relationship with Euro Asia Pay’s team and closed the licensing transaction.
This licensing transaction was based on similar models that I used in earlier ventures that had resulted in operational success. All of our licensing transactions are based on the innovations and technology platform we have built, and are continuing to build. We are continuing to look for more opportunities to leverage our technology.
We are also exploring licensing opportunities for the BlockImpact cryptocurrency and blockchain platform that we acquired last year to accelerate our blockchain development. These licensing opportunities would go beyond our rewards token initiative.
A model of success for Glance
Glance is following the successful business model of Vancouver-based PayByPhone (formerly Verrus Mobile Technologies), an internationally successful mobile payment company that I co-founded and was CEO of from inception until it was acquired.
During this period, the PayByPhone team took the technology from a concept to a platform processing tens of millions of mobile payments annually for millions of consumers around the world, making it one of the leading mobile payment apps in the market at the time.
As with PayByPhone, we are proving our technology locally, in Vancouver, and then setting the stage for new geographical markets. That stage-setting is already underway, with new restaurants signing up in California and with our new offices in the U.K. and Australia.
Our financial resources
At the end of our most recent fiscal quarter we had over $13 million of cash, and no debt. We have a solid runway because we have worked hard to become more efficient in our spending since the termination of the dissident shareholder’s consulting agreement in February.
It is worth noting that I have raised more than $40 million throughout my tenure at PayByPhone and at Glance. My experience at Glance has been that investors generally wish to deal with the CEO and my track record with PayByPhone has been the foundation for Glance’s credibility. Should Glance require more capital in the future, as CEO I will continue to oversee our fund raising efforts and am confident that investors will be interested in Glance’s future.
Our key competitive advantages
A key competitive advantage for Glance from the outset has been our sophisticated anti-fraud technology. At a similar stage, even much larger companies have experienced significantly higher rates of fraud, such as an estimated 6% fraud rate in the early months of Apple Pay. We have had zero instances of fraud dating back well over a year, and that’s a major consideration for merchants. This stellar track record bodes well for our future.
At the outset, Glance targeted full-serve restaurants because we saw an obvious benefit to customers paying for the meals more quickly and allowing the restaurant to seat their next client while offering automatic rewards and incentives to drive repeat usage. We continue to enter new industry verticals such as salons, automotive and parking tickets, despite the distraction of the unnecessary proxy contest.
Glance has embarked on a strong and fruitful path
By establishing the usability of our technology, expanding our target market to a broader array of merchants, improving capacity for monetization with more products, raising significant capital, eliminating fraud and strengthening our product offering, we feel Glance has embarked on a strong and fruitful path.
We firmly believe that mobile devices are the future of payments and consumer engagement, and we believe blockchain is a fundamentally transformative technology. According to iResearch, mobile payments are the dominant form of payment in China, where annual payments already amount to trillions of U.S. dollars on an annual basis.
We believe Glance is well positioned to take advantage of these technological trends as we continue to build our technology and expand our network of merchants and consumers. Every year mobile phones advance significantly, accelerating the transition to mobile payments and giving us even more tools for innovation.
We value all our merchants, users, and shareholders, and we thank you for your support. We are excited about the future and we have a fantastic team to execute. We hope you protect your investment by voting the BLUE proxy for Glance’s nominees.
Sincerely,
“Desmond Griffin”
danke Desmond bin froh investiert zu sein :)
|