What is EBCoin

Abstract

The EBCoin ecosystem will revolutionize the duty free/tourism tax refund market, currently estimated to be valued at $60 billion a year. EBCoin will function as an ERC20 token, standardized on the Ethereum blockchain and will be complemented by a complete eWallet solution. By using the EBCoin platform, consumers will receive their refunds instantly and can use the proceeds as a digital currency. With EBCoin, tax refunds will be transparent, resulting in greater efficiencies for tax authorities. For retailers, EBCoin will significantly reduce the high costs associated with the inefficient systems presently being used. It will also help promote higher spending by tourists at participating duty-free retailers, where consumers will be able to present payment using their EBCoin wallet as an optional payment method. Our research has shown that up to $24 billion in sales tax refunds are unclaimed by travelers. This is due to inefficiencies in the current systems, such as paper based processes associated with collecting tax refunds at points of departure. In addition, the industry currently charges merchants processing fees of up to 30% on the tax refund amount. This limits the effective use of sales tax refunds as an incentive to expand the shopping habits of tourists at their travel destinations. The EBCoin ecosystem consists of: consumer interfaces in the form of a mobile wallet application, the EBCoin token as a new digital currency, ATM kiosks in global airports, and merchant interfaces for accepting payments and participating in loyalty programs. The EBCoin token will act as a method for accepting payments by participating retailers, as well as having the capacity to process loyalty benefit program transactions. In turn, the ATM kiosks will support instant conversion to fiat or other cryptocurrencies. The EBCoin project is backed by KR Partners Co. Ltd (KRP), a Korean based payment services provider established in 2006, specializing in tourism, travel and duty-free industries. KRP now has over 6,000 online and offline merchants in South Korea, China, Japan and Southeast Asia. Clients include airlines, duty-free shops, department stores and hotels. EBCoin has an international Board of Advisors, with deep domain experience in digital payments, financial technology services, tax refunds and monetary systems. Phase One of the EBCoin go-to-market strategy is to target the tourism corridors between China and South Korea, as well as Japan and South Korea. In addition, EBCoin will also focus on key tourism corridors for Chinese, Korean and Japanese tourists in Southeast Asia. Phase Two will expand to target other key Asian tourist corridors, including Europe and Australia. Further, we have also identified that there are tremendous opportunities in other duty-free hubs, such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi. These and others will be included in future phases of our project development.