Don’t you just love it when you go shopping and find out there’s some sort of promotional deal going on for the exact item you want? You end up getting the item cheaper than you thought you would, so you leave the store with a really warm and fuzzy feeling in your stomach. It’s pure satisfaction and so simple. Those are the good days. Then there are the times when the thing you need has just been marked up but you buy it anyway because you need it and so you leave the store all grumbly. Those days are less fun.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to make all your shopping days the warm and fuzzy kind? Well, I may have an ICO solution for you. EZ Solution JSC has just begun an ICO (initial coin offering) for its brand new token, the EZToken (EZT). EZPOS is aiming to be a universal marketing and loyalty platform powered by blockchain. The point is to improve customer engagement with merchants, which will in turn help to make the customers’ shopping experience better and the merchants’ revenue stronger.

Regular loyalty programs are complicated. We’ve probably all had an experience where we go to use our points only to discover that they’ve expired or that they only work for this or that product from this or that time. It’s a hassle and at times, incredibly frustrating. EZPOS wants to eliminate that frustration. The possibilities are endless – think, points that never expire, points that can be exchanged into regular currency, points that can be used not just at one store, but with multiple brands across the board. All of this is possible with EZPOS. It’s so simple, it’s EZ.

Already, 10,000 merchants have signed on, with over 4.5 million customers participating, so, the platform is off to a good start. The target goal is 100,000 merchants and millions of customers around the world by 2019-2020. The pre-ICO, which started on December 7, 2017, was a huge success, selling 1 million EZT for $600,000 (tokens sold for $0.60 during the pre-ICO time period). There will be three rounds of the ICO. Round 1 is currently underway, from January 1-7. Tokens are going for $0.85 per EZT, with a limit of 1 million tokens. Round 2 will take place from January 8-14, at $1.00 per EZT, limited to 1 million tokens. Finally, round 3 will be from January 15-February 4, at $1.20 per EZT, limited to 5 million tokens. Once $5 million worth of tokens have been sold total, the ICO will stop, regardless of what round it’s in. To contribute, you must register on the EZPOS website. The minimum contribution is 50 EZT and both Bitcoin and Ether are acceptable forms of contribution.

I think this is a great idea, personally. It would be amazing to be able to collect points from a variety of different stores and to be able to use those points for rewards at all the different types of stores participating – from groceries to books, to clothing. The fact that you’ll be able to exchange the tokens you earn for regular currency is also intriguing. However, I don’t think this is going to be super relevant in North America for a while, meaning it’s not going to be super relevant for me. The platform has started in Southeast Asia and despite the goals of EZPOS, it may never end up making its way over here. I do think it’s going to have a harder time getting larger merchants to sign up than it thinks it’s going to and without those large merchants, there’s practically no hope of getting into North America, which is dominated by the big chains. But a cool concept, nonetheless.

Start Date: 01 Jan 2018. End Date: 04 Feb 2018.

Find out more about EZPOS here

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