I would like a little better explanation of how "decentralized debit-cards" are supposed to work.
Are they supposed to be able to be used at point of sale purchases? If so, how is that supposed to work? The reason businesses except your current banks Visa, or Mastercard debit-card is because of the centralized entity(Visa, or Mastercard) that backs up the purchases. Anyone could print up a bunch of cards that are not backed by Visa, or Mastercard....but no one is going to accept them for purchases.
Banks also offer a non-branded debit-card for people with only a savings account. This debit-card is only used to withdraw money from your banks ATM. It cannot be used for purchases. I do not see how this could be an option either because you need the centralized entity(your bank) to hold an account and offer withdrawal services through the ATM.
None of the above would allow even a fraction of decentralization.
Hi,
Take a look:
Debit cards were in our minds since day one, for it is one of the preferred payment methods of customers nowadays and we aim to mass market adoption, so this goal may not be too surprising. The idea is to eliminate all the intermediaries in the process in order to save time and money, and also the unwanted consequences that brings centralization (frozen accounts, delays, usage of our own private information, etc). Note that it will have disadvantages such as if you wish to create and load your own cards you will need to have a particular hardware. On the other hand, there will be lots of payment terminals/point of sale terminals that will receive a special update with a custom firmware made by us in order to accept our debit cards (this will happen with payment terminals/point of sale non- EMV compatibles). In most terminals compatible with EMV (for more information about EMV visit:
http://www.emv-connection.com/emv-faq/ and
https://www.level2kernel.com/emv-guide.html) will work without any problems but you can still use our firmware to have advantages like counting with Opair´s branding or offer high performance. Technical details will be available on our whitepaper.
Our final goal it is that any person can create their own debit card, anywhere, and a few moments later, carry it out and about without difficulties. We would like to be the firsts in launching this feature that we will be seeked and cherished in the near future and as we are an open source project we would like to share it to all the community as we understand this philosophy as a benefit that benefits the community as a whole. This will also allow growth, improvement and usage from other projects.
Regards