Collaborative procurement platform BuyCo.io is to use permissioned distributed ledgers and smart contracts to lower the costs of currency conversion and money transmission for buyers on group purchasing marketplaces.
Collective purchasing is when a group of people get together to procure goods or services from one or more vendors on an ad hoc or ongoing basis.
Built on Uphold Connect, Uphold’s open API, BuyCo.io allows individuals and businesses to hold value in any of 25 currencies, convert money instantly at the mid-market rate and send money in any denomination or amount to anyone in the world, instantly and for free.
The company says the approach frees up as much as 15% margin on cross-border trading and transactions typically conducted over centralised e-commerce sites such as Amazon and Alibaba.
Jamie Burke, BuyCo.io founder and investor says: "Traditionally, buying cooperatives are time and labour intensive to set-up and run. BuyCo.io gets buyers set-up in a matter of seconds, and the entire process from order processing, supplier management, governance, escrow and payment processing are all fully automated through smart contracts built on Ethereum blockchain technology."
He says the company is now raising further funds to commercially exploit and scale the opportunity as well as grow the senior management team.