Anyone that’s made a stablecoin transfer can appreciate the speed and low cost. But if you do it via a crypto self hosted wallet, it’s not user friendly in a mainstream way. Sling has created a mobile app that hides the blockchain complexity enabling transfers to 50 countries. This week it announced it raised a $15 million Series A round led by Union Square Ventures, Ribbit Capital, and Slow Ventures. Ribbit and Slow are existing seed backers.
Sling payments involve the transfer of a Paxos Dollar (USDP) stablecoin on the Solana blockchain between the sender and recipient.
The challenge and upside with payment platforms is the network effect. Once you get it going, it’s a virtuous circle, but it’s really hard to get started. Sling has a clever solution to sidestep traction issues in the early days. If a Sling user wants to send money to someone who doesn’t have the Sling app, they send them a Sling link. The recipient then enters their bank details to receive the money, with Sling converting the stablecoin to fiat currency in the background.
One potential downside is this might attract hackers who create links that look like Sling links in order to phish for bank details.
“The most exciting web3 opportunities center around applications that will onboard many millions, and eventually billions, of users to crypto by offering a combination of true utility and an easy to use, best in class consumer product,” said Union Square General Partner Rebecca Kaden. “These products have to solve real problems and do so in a way that brings a sense of magic to the average user.”
Mike Hudack, co-founder and CEO of Avian Labs, Sling Money’s parent company reiterated the usability aspect. “This capability has existed for a while now, but it’s been hidden behind complicated, user-confounding interfaces. Our goal is to fix that.”
Sling’s just getting started
So far Sling is in pilot mode in 50 countries in Europe and Africa. It’s not massive yet – a quick look at the Solana blockchain explorer shows the entire USDP balance on Solana is around $350,000, 537 holders and up to ten transfers an hour (for USDP rather than Sling).
Over time Sling plans to expand the available stablecoins, including adding some denominated in other G7 currencies. For now, it makes its money on the exchange rate between the stablecoin and fiat currencies. Transfers are free.
Clearly it’s still early days. But there’s significant demand for peer-to-peer wallets as apps like Venmo have demonstrated. The plus for Sling is the blockchain infrastructure is so inexpensive.