Dear experts!Thank you so much for all your constructive and useful criticism, ideas and advice.
Let me invite you to continue our discussion in a new post about FUELDApp announcing the PRE-ICO for this project here:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.23614558Dear experts!
I will be most grateful for your feedback on this idea of a new mobile app that lets you pay for fuel fill-ups at gas stations (using crypto currency or regular money).
Technically speaking, the app has an electronic wallet with your banking cards, e-money, crypto currencies tied to it. When you come to a gas station for some fuel you use your phone to scan a bar-code/QR-code placed on the gas pump, then on the app screen specify the desired amount of fuel and instruct the app to process payment for the purchased fuel. In case there is not enough funds on your balance the system will make it possible to buy fuel on credit (offered by a bank or by the gas station).
The app creates the following advantages for the client:
1. Saving money: thanks to gas stations sharing 0.5-3% commission with the app operator it makes it possible to share part of that commission with the app user.
2. Saving time: no need to spend time on interaction with gas station personnel.
3. Mobility: no need to carry around a number of banking cards or cash. Your e-wallet solves it all. Moreover, you can borrow some funds on credit.
The app creates the following advantages for the gas station operators:
1. Less personnel required leading to cutting operational costs.
2. Increasing sales due to conveniences for customers and instant loans;
3. Cutting marketing costs thanks to the appearance of customer database.
The app creators earn their commission from gas stations AND on offering gas stations the valuable marketing data derived from the app. The volume of the world market for the app is more than 15 billion USD / year. Therefore, even small percentage of this amounts to multi-million profits.
I live in the suburbs and I work in the downtown which is approximately 30 km away. Every morning I have to take my kid to school and I’m always short of time. I am sure millions of families face the same problem. Some time ago as I was on my regular home-school-work route I realized I was running out of fuel. I could do nothing but head over to a gas station immediately. It was raining and there were car queues with drivers walking slowly to and from cash-desk, which irritated me enormously. I lost quite some time and I was sorry I hadn’t filled up the day before. To cap it all, I finally realized I had left my wallet at home. So I had to get back home after having spent 20 minutes at the gas station. It cost me another 15 minutes followed by another 15 minutes back to the gas station and another 20 minutes waiting in the queue again. After all, I spent more than an hour on filling up and I got wet in the rain and I was late everywhere.
So I thought that I would have avoided all that trouble if I had had such a wonderful app tied to my banking card. I could have even paid without getting out of my car! First of all, queues would have shrunk as there would be no need to walk to and from the cash-desk (it usually takes around 3 minutes for each driver). In other words, I would have waited for 5 minutes instead of 20 minutes. Besides, I would have avoided returning home to get my wallet. Finally, I would have stayed dry safely seated in my car.
I did some research and found no real app solutions to this problem, except for a couple of apps working only in limited areas of the world. Now I teamed up with some developers to create a universal app for all gas stations.
Some banks I talked to agreed to enable overdraft payments for the app users. A number of gas station networks liked the idea about the app as it would mean cutting costs on personnel, cutting queues, introducing loyalty programs, getting quick customer feedback via the app and communicating marketing stuff to customers directly. Another efficient tool analyzing fuel sales will be created linked to the app infrastructure, which will allow gas station networks to hold efficient marketing activities.
Dear friends, I will appreciate your thoughts and evaluation of my idea and any useful feedback as I am thinking about running an ICO campaign in relation to this app. Thank you so much!