MakeCents aims to disrupt the $420 trillion global payments infrastructure by leveraging its blockchain technology to connect businesses, financial institutions, and consumers on a decentralized platform in order for them to transact more efficiently, more securely, and with transparency – all at a fraction of the cost of traditional payment methods.

The first application of the MakeCents network is a simple, easy-to-use mobile wallet, which differentiates itself from other mobile payment solutions by incorporating cash transactions into the payment process. Through disintermediation of legacy payment rails and processes that are often expensive and time-consuming, MakeCents believes that it can provide both unbanked and underbanked U.S. households with greater access to mobile money.

MakeCents also aims to develop a solution that enables merchants to process payments in a new cost-effective manner, while improving the speed of their checkout lines, streamlining their cash-handling operations, and creating an unprecedented opportunity to conduct targeted marketing and promotions without compromising the privacy of their customers. For financial institutions, MakeCents intends to eliminate their need to support multiple ledger management, while providing enterprise-grade smart contracts for faster settlement between parties.

The MakeCents team – which consists of expert blockchain technologists, distributed system and security engineers, application developers, and fintech strategists – recently established working beta partnerships for future integration with Seabra Foods, a 14-store grocery chain with locations across New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Florida, as well as a large U.S.-based, publicly traded company. Additionally, MakeCents is in early beta partnership discussions with a number of widely-recognized fast food chain restaurants.

MakeCents has also formed a veteran Advisory Board, comprised of leading technology, retail, research, and business professionals, including:

• Mark Walsh, who previously served as Head of the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Investment & Innovation, Advisor on the U.S. Securities Exchange and Commission’s (SEC) Committee on Capital Formation for Small and Medium Business, and has also held several senior leadership positions at HBO, General Electric, AOL, Verticalnet, and GeniusRocket.com;
• Tom Burgess, who is a successful serial entrepreneur in digital media, payments, and online advertising, and the former Founder and CEO of Linkable Networks, a payments loyalty company that was acquired by Collinson Group in September 2017; and
• Robert Dahlberg, Ph.D., who is currently an Assistant Professor of Computer Science where he leads research efforts in blockchain optimization and access control at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Engineering, and is formerly an IT Architect and Security Design Review Board Chairman for the Federal Reserve of Richmond.

Along with seven other startups, MakeCents recently graduated from the DCU FinTech Innovation Center, a non-profit organization that fosters seed-stage fintech startups and promotes the fintech ecosystem in Boston