Moon Technologies

Moon is a payments platform that enables consumers to pay with cryptocurrency anywhere privately, securely and without fees.

Background/History

Moon launched the Moon Browser Extension in April 2019, allowing consumers to shop on Amazon.com with cryptocurrency. Moon is integrated with both Coinbase and the Lightning Network. Users can make payments instantly from their Coinbase account using Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ether and Bitcoin Cash or via their favorite Lightning Network enabled wallet.

Moon is relaunching their browser extension for the 2020 holiday shopping season with the ability to facilitate crypto payments at over 50 million merchants worldwide.

Product

Browser Extension

The Moon browser extension augments the checkout process at eCommerce merchants to enable cryptocurrency payments options. No merchant integration is required for Moon to facilitate payments.

Payment Methods

Currently consumers can pay with Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ether or Bitcoin cash via our integration with Coinbase, or pay with Bitcoin with their favorite Lightning Network enabled wallet. Integrations with additional custodians and protocols are underway to provide even more ways for consumers to use cryptocurrency as a medium of exchange. For example, Moon will be integrating with the Celo Network to support the cUSD Celo Dollar stable coin.

Rewards

Consumers earn BTC rewards for their purchases. We can also reward consumers with other tokens that token issuers want to distribute. This is a great alternative to airdropping as consumers must earn the tokens and are more likely to value them.

Value Propositions

There are a number of value propositions the product offers for various stakeholders:

• Enable cryptocurrency to be used as a medium of exchange
• Allow consumers to earn Bitcoin rewards for using crypto as a medium of exchange
• Provide merchants participating in Moon's rewards program perfectly accurate attribution
• Provide token issuers a method to distribute tokens to consumers in the form of rewards

Team

• Ken Kruger, CEO

Competitive Landscape

Other entrants in the field include companies offering crypto debit cards, such as Bitpay, Crypto.com and Spend.com, and crypto payments APIs, such as Bitpay, CoinPayments, and CoinGate. Moon's ability to enable crypto payments everywhere in a smooth user interface without taking custody of funds or charging fees sets Moon apart from its competitors.

Moon's integration with Lightning Network makes it the fastest and least expensive method to make an eCommerce payment with Bitcoin without providing custody to a 3rd party.

Moon has been the only product that enables consumers to pay with cryptocurrency directly on Amazon.com.

SWOT Analysis

The following details Moon's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Strengths	Weaknesses
Partnerships with major traditional financial institution, top US cryptocurrency exchange and popular cryptocurrency projects Browser extension form factor is stickier than the overcrowded app market Product was already in market in 2019 enabling crypto payments on Amazon, leading to some product validation, brand recognition and a user base Non-custodial aspect appeals to core market segment of crypto evangelists Private transactions protect the identity of the user from the merchant	Less funding than competitors Smaller team than competitors Non-custodial aspect prevents us from having additional funds under management as compared to competition
Opportunities	Threats
Browser extension form factor allows us to run unique promotions, similar to that of Honey Ability to be pre-installed or integrated directly into browsers (we only provide the backend in this case) Competitors are only focused on Bitcoin. We are multicurrency with a focus on stablecoins, which have a greater incentive for spending	Competitors that are focusing on mobile first experiences similar to our platform There are central points of failure: distribution via Chrome web store and reliance on a US bank and traditional financial network International expansion requires additional international banking partners and meeting the different regulations of each country (specifically around KYC/AML)

Updates

• August 2020: Original bank partner unable to provide what was specified in contract. We are now in review with four other banks. We are aiming to partner with two banks for the sake of redundancy.
• October 2020: We have secured a bank partner and are on track for launch before Christmas.
• November 2020: We developed an economic model for our rewards program and have nearly completed our integration with our bank partner. We also tested variations of our value proposition focused on privacy & security which lead to us winning a pitch competition.
• December 2020: We completed integration with our bank partner and submitted all marketing material to the bank and payments networks for review prior to launch.

Goals/Results

Goal Set	Goal	Target Date	Result
July 31, 2020	Relaunch of product with "pay anywhere" functionality.	October 21, 2020	Delayed due to bank partner.
July 31, 2020	Migrate architecture off of Serverless framework in order to alleviate development hurdles and speed future development.	October 21, 2020	Complete
July 31, 2020	Develop economic model for rewards program using market data as input assumptions.	October 21, 2020	Complete
October 26, 2020	Complete integration with bank partner.	December 10, 2020	Complete
October 26, 2020	Relaunch of product with "pay anywhere" functionality.	December 10, 2020	Pending
October 26, 2020	Finalize economic model for launching a rewards program to drive user adoption.	December 10, 2020	Complete
December 10, 2020	Achieve $50K USD in transaction volume after product launch	February 25, 2020	Pending
December 10, 2020	Launch a web-based version of the product.	February 25, 2020	Pending
December 10, 2020	Add support for direct Bitcoin transactions.	February 25, 2020	Pending

See also

Payment System

External Links

Official Website

Demo Video - Using Moon to Pay with Bitcoin on Amazon.com via Lightning Network

Moon Launch Announcement in CoinDesk

Moon in TechCrunch