Competition Checklist

Here are a couple bullets to keep in mind when comparing the competition:

• Do they use cards? Cards use the old payment rails and therefore are not actually taking on the payments industry. These old rails charge retailers the same high fees so there is really no real benefit for them. Most are just glorified gift cards.
• Do they require merchants to upgrade their hardware / software? Flexa runs on existing hardware. No need to buy anything or train their employees. This is huge for merchant adoption. Ideally no change to software either - maybe just an update. I'd watch out for projects that force the merchant switch to their software and/or hardware.
• Do they allow payments with more than just a single crypto? The more coins allowed the better. Flexa's goal is "any coin". lofty goal but that is where the team is aiming. we are not forced to buy things with amp or a flexacoin so I'd be careful of apps that force you to use a "their" coin or only support bitcoin. Here is flexa's current support.
• Where can I use this? I can walk into any Lowes, Bed Bath Beyond or Dunkin and pay using flexa. If they have impressive partners, what actually is the nature of these partnerships? Any videos of people using it these stores? (Be careful, I've seen some that make it look like you can spend at top retailers just to read the fine print to find out these were just the gift cards you could buy with their app).
• Is it actually my crypto? Okay this is actually just for payment solutions like paypal. We don't want projects where you buy crypto from them and then can only spend thru them.
• Is their region heavily regulated? Flexa's plan is to get up and running in the most regulated markets first. Then easily move into less regulated regions. It's fine if the competitor is in a country that doesn't have the regulations requirements like America (and even worse NY). But can they, or are they willing to change? Or are they going to be stuck in that one region?
• Apps? We want to make sure that there is at least the possibility of 3rd party apps. No matter how good the app, if forced to used a single app, the project will always be limited. Flexa hopefully will be releasing their SDK soon and have apps in the works.
• What's the team look like? this is subjective but I think the Flexa team is very impressive.
• Do they have funding? flexa does. you want your project to be able to raise funds and stick around.
• Is it bigger than payments? In my mind this is the most important one. The thing I love about amp is it's bigger than Flexa, bigger than payments. If the project can only be used for payments, I'd say it's limited. Projects only focusing on payments require mass adoption which, sorry, probably won't happen anytime soon. AMP is not a payment token it's a collateral token, meaning it can be used in any situation where collateral is needed. If you're sick of those 7-10 day deposit wait times on gemini, well maybe they could use amp. defi loans? loyalty apps? settlements? gift cards? escrow? bank deposits? currency conversion? NFT pawn shop, lol? who knows how we'll end up using it, but the future is bright.

Ultimately I don't think this is a zero sum game. I think there is room for many players in this space. And there is probably many ways to make money esp in the short term. but I haven't seen one competitor that has the massive long term potential that AMP has. just my opinion, but there you go.

If I missed any (which I probably did) let me know and I'll add them.

Edits from the community (/u/praveenballa):

• Is the technology easily "copyable"? Flexa does hold two (that we know of) patents (links in sidebar). personally I'm torn on this and I think it's somewhat subjective. There are open source projects that are super easy to copy but doesn't affect their popularity. So this one is up to y'all.
• Who is supporting them? I'd lump this in with the team point above. but take a look at the advisory board and investors. Are they leaders in the industry?
• Token Economics. Do the economics fit your goals? does it seem sound? IMO AMP is a longer play, we are taking on a massive 70 year old industry with deep pockets. Other payment projects might be shorter term (like those using cards) but the payoff will probably be much lower. for those that don't know amp is supposed to be low volatility and should slowly grow in value with the growth of the network. How? basically, each transaction has a reward that needs to be paid to the stakers. This reward must be bought on the open market, which creates buy pressure. the more people taking their tokens out of the market, or staking them, means fewer tokens on the market. the more people using the network the greater the buy pressure. (tl;dr - if you want the value of AMP to go up, stake your tokens, and use/promote the network)
• What about security? (Found this info on discord) Flexa takes security very seriously. It is understandable as Flexa works with the largest Enterprises in the world

1. Amp Staking Contracts have been audited by the word's best security companies like Trail of Bits, ConsenSys Diligence, etc. Flexa continues to have them audited regularly. https://flexa.network/security
2. Flexa also had the contracts and code audited by the worlds biggest software security company like Praetorian https://flexa.network/security
3. Flexa also has one of the largest bug bounties ever - https://flexa.network/security/bug-bounty-program
4. Flexa Staking also has insurance coverage offered by Nexus Mutual. It is available for just $2.6 per year for $100 worth of $AMP. The insurance cost is very low @ just 2.6%. So, if you have $100 worth of AMP, you can simply go to https://app.nexusmutual.io/cover/buy/select-project and buy cover using ETH/DAI for any time b/w 1 day to 365 days, for how much ever you want, equal to your AMP holding or more than your AMP holding. In the event of any smart contract hack, you can send your claim to NXM and you get paid in DAI or ETH (just like car insurance)

• Merchant focus. Probably a good idea to make sure the project isn't tied to a particular industry. if they only seem to be available in restaurants there might be a reason and this should be investigated. I don't recall any projects like this but it's probably a good thing to keep in mind.