30th Aug 2021
5 min read

ARK + Payvo: Connecting the Dots

Since we announced Payvo, I have seen a lot of questions within the community about the Payvo Platform, why we needed new branding and how it helps the ARK Ecosystem. Today I would like to take some time to answer that question and explain our reasoning behind the recent moves we have made.

Why the New Branding?

The most common question we get in regards to Payvo is, why the new branding? Why not call it ARK Pay 2.0 and why rebrand the ARK Desktop Wallet to Payvo Wallet? Why not push the ARK brand?

In order to understand this decision, it is important that we bring up some issues with the industry that we have previously highlighted.

  1. The industry is very segmented. Everyone is in a Silo and no one works together.
  2. Projects and enthusiasts (token holders) often have an adversarial view of other assets and technologies that they believe compete with their preferred investment.
  3. ARK has always been about trying to bridge that gap, that’s where “ARK has no competitors, just future partners” came from.

With that in mind, the decision to rebrand the financial platform in particular was made to allow the product to appeal to the widest possible audience. When looking at our most popular products (the desktop and mobile wallets), we quickly realized that they were very popular with those who used them, but we were limiting their appeal by burying them in the “ARK Silo”.

By making our wallet ARK specific and having it be branded with the same branding as the Token, we pigeon hole our audience and create a point of friction for those outside of our community and ecosystem. The only reason to do this kind of married branding would be to leverage the popularity of the wallet to bring more users into ARK. That doesn’t mean ignoring reality. No one will specifically come to ARK just because we have a nice wallet. That has not and will not ever be the case.

This understanding fueled our decision to focus our products more on an industry wide approach, including not just their function but also their branding. Why? Because we build products for them to succeed and having them appeal to the widest possible audience gives them the best chance at success. By creating a greater form of dissociation between the Desktop and Mobile Wallets and the ARK Token and Network, we create a much more positive marketing environment that allows us to create new partnerships, integrations, and reach a much larger potential audience.

How Does that Help the ARK Ecosystem?

The logical follow up question for many then becomes, OK, great, I get it, but how does that help ME? I am an ARK holder, what do I get out of it?

There are a lot of things to unpack in that question, but for this particular blog I’d like to give a more straightforward answer and just stick to the most basic possible benefits, so here they are.

You get a better wallet that allows you to hold your ARK and all of your other favorite tokens without needing any other wallet.

Currently, as an ARK holder, you are limited in what wallets you can use. If you love the ARK Wallet, it is frustrating to have to use the ARK Desktop Wallet for your ARK and then switch to another wallet for all of your other assets. By making the ARK Desktop Wallet multi-asset, we can play off the strengths of our team and create a better product for our users that gives you more access and more features.

You get a payment platform that has multiple tokens integrated and therefore a better chance at adoption among merchants as a payment solution, bringing ARK payments to more potential vendors.

A payment processor that only accepts ARK has no wide appeal. Again, people will not switch to ARK just to use our payment processor, but if they use our payment processor for BTC or Ethereum, they may be more likely to accept ARK as well. They at least have that built in function at their fingertips. Everyone often harps on utility but payments are still a large utility case for crypto. In this case, the wider the appeal of our payment platform, the wider the audience that can accept ARK as well.

We get access to more partners, more development efforts, and more ideas.

By building an all-inclusive platform that anyone feels like they can be a part of, we build a coalition of partners all pushing together. Most payment solutions out there only except the top few assets or ERC20 tokens, but there are a lot more players in the industry. We can provide a solution and make partnerships with other teams and tokens and work together to develop and market the platform as a much larger community when we all work together. In order to get them on board, we need a product that has that wider appeal to their audiences as well as ours. If we partner with another team and they have a great idea that they help us bake into Payvo, ARK holders get that benefit as well.

ARK Has No Competitors, Only Future Partners

This motto means something at ARK. It’s not about defeating anyone, it’s about creating true interoperability through integration and partnership. This path we are setting helps to enable that goal and push us forward with much more potential than we would have as just ARK. The points above are just the basic benefits that Payvo can bring to ARK and the same goes for MarketSquare.

One final note:

We cannot say that we believe the industry suffers from everyone building in their silos and then lock ourselves away in our own. For the industry to come together, someone has to take the first step.

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