In recent months, residents of British Columbia and Alberta might have noticed a brightly wrapped, modestly-sized blue caravan cruising the local streets.
The “Shakemobile,” as it’s known, is on a cross-country tour to engage with Canadians who are feeling the squeeze of inflation and high interest rates.
The “Inflated Tour” stops at small-town businesses, grocery stores, and gas stations. Its driver, a friendly Canadian wearing jeans and a T-shirt, oversees impromptu contests and giveaways that he posts on TikTok.
“It is something that people should accumulate in the same way they accumulate property, investments in the stock market, or gold.”
Jean Amiouny
Shakepay CEO
It’s a premise designed to appeal to anyone who has been impacted by the increased cost of living in this country, and who feels like they just can’t catch a break or seem to get ahead.
The solution the Shakemobile is offering? Bitcoin.
The campaign, which has accrued more than 350 million views on social media, is a strategy of Montreal-based FinTech startup Shakepay. The company sees an untapped market for cryptocurrency among Canadians who feel financially stretched, and who believe that the current banking system is not working for them.
“There’s a population in Canada that is underserved by the financial system today,” Jean Amiouny, CEO and co-founder of Shakepay, told BetaKit.
To get that population to embrace the potential of Bitcoin, Shakepay is positioning the asset as an unconventional opportunity: a long-term investment and way to finally accrue wealth.
And while crypto adoption has yet to truly reach the mainstream in Canada, Amiouny believes Shakepay is poised to change that.
Shaking things up
Shakepay’s platform allows Canadians to buy, hold, and earn bitcoin, but according to Amiouny, it’s not your typical trading platform, which would encourage customers to trade on a regular basis.
“What you’ll see with most other crypto platforms is that they’ll have dozens or even hundreds of cryptocurrencies,” he said. “They’ll add the latest, flashy one, they’ll send you push notifications about the top moving currency in the last 24 hours, and try to incentivize you to trade.”
On Shakepay, customers can trade only in bitcoin and ethereum, two of the most popular and valuable cryptocurrencies. That’s because Shakepay doesn’t want its customers to trade, it wants them to save. Through its platform, the company encourages customers to accumulate and hold currency and let it appreciate over the long term.
“It is something that people should accumulate in the same way they accumulate property, investments in the stock market, or gold,” Amiouny believes.
Crypto, simplified
Shakepay has been around since 2015, but back then, the platform looked quite different. Originally, Shakepay offered a bitcoin-loadable Visa card that customers could spend in physical retail stores.
But in 2018, the Shakepay team realized that they weren’t actively using their own product, a practice known in tech as “dogfooding.” If they weren’t using it, Shakepay wondered, why would anyone else?
“Whenever you build a consumer product, it’s really important that it’s something that you use,” Amiouny said. “The level of insight that you gain from dogfooding your product is so immensely valuable.”
Today, Shakepay’s offerings include a prepaid Visa card that provides up to two percent cashback in bitcoin, and other traditional financial products, such as direct deposit where customers can get “shakepaid” and earn bitcoin on top of their pay cheque. Customers can also earn bitcoin daily by shaking their phone while using the company’s app, a practice known as “ShakingSats,” which the company describes as “the most unique feature to accumulate rewards in the country.” Since 2019, Shakepay has given out more than $50 million in bitcoin rewards to its customers.
Eric Richmond, General Counsel and Head of Business Development at Shakepay, described the platform as a modern-day savings account that’s ideal for Canadians who are just starting out with the currency.
“You don’t need to be a Bitcoiner or a crypto-savvy person to be a customer of Shakepay,” he noted. “There’s a growing segment of Shakepay’s customer base that is actually neither of those.”
As part of its strategy, Shakepay is trying to reduce what it sees as the first barrier to Bitcoin adoption: complexity. A recent study by the Canadian Web3 Council found that one-third of Canadians feel they don’t understand the technology.
Amiouny noted that nascent assets like crypto can be inherently complex, but Shakepay has simplified the entry point by focusing on Bitcoin, and designing its customer interface so that the average Canadian with no pre-existing knowledge can get started.
Promoting Bitcoin adoption in Canada also requires building trust and educating the public. Many Canadians are still wary of crypto, informed by the high profile FTX scandal.
Shakepay wants to address those concerns head on.
Customers have immediate access to their crypto funds on Shakepay, and the company keeps customer funds isolated from other balances and does not profit from these funds. The company did this proactively, long before these changes were mandated by regulators in response to the mismanagement and co-mingling of customers’ funds that played a major role in the market’s decline in 2022, when bitcoin values fell by 64 percent.
That ‘crypto winter,’ as that period is known, also proved that the value of bitcoin and ethereum can rise and fall significantly over short periods. This volatility affected activity on platforms like Shakepay, and the company noted that the downturn incentivized them to develop resilience to these swings.
They did so by developing and launching new products, including traditional financial products that allow Canadians to receive their paycheques directly in their Shakepay account, automatically convert part of their pay into bitcoin, and also make bill payments and transfers.
“The downturn gave us the opportunity to branch out into supporting more of everyone’s day-to-day financial activities,” Amiouny said. “It allowed us to take more control over our growth and minimize the impact of the macro cycles.”
Welcoming the watchdogs
Richmond, who joined Shakepay in February, believes the key to fostering Bitcoin adoption in Canada lies in regulation. He was previously the founder of Tetra Trust, the first company in Canada to be licensed to securely store digital assets, and he joined Shakepay after a stint as president of Coinsquare.
He said Shakepay is already regulated by the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, better known as FINTRAC, which guards against money laundering and terrorist financing. Shakepay is also registered as a Restricted Dealer with the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) and the securities regulatory authorities in all Canadian provinces and territories.
Shakepay is currently working towards becoming regulated by the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) which means it will be held to the same standards as other investment dealers, including those held by the big banks. Richmond noted the firm is looking to become a dealer member under CIRO later this year.
Finally, Shakepay will register in November to become a payment service provider under the federal government’s Retail Payment Activities Act, which will regulate companies to safeguard funds with certain operational risk requirements.
“Regulation makes it easier for Canadians to trust platforms like Shakepay,” Richmond noted. “Canadians are very familiar with other CIRO-regulated dealers in the space where they invest their stocks, and so that offers a certain level of credibility to platforms like ours.”
Bitcoin as a long-term bet
Since its cross-Canada journey kicked off last November, the Shakemobile has handed out more than $60,000 in rewards to surprised grocery shoppers. But will those who have been “shakepaid” adopt the startup’s approach and hold onto this cryptocurrency to allow it to appreciate over time?
According to the company, they are. Among Shakepay’s one million customers, 40 percent have never sold any of their bitcoin, and 80 percent have purchased more than they’ve sold.
To Amiouny, this is indicative that Canadians are ready to view bitcoin as a true investment rather than a short-term trade.
“We know that affordability is the biggest issue for Canadians right now, and it’s why we are working hard to create a more financially inclusive Canada by providing financial applications built on top of Bitcoin for accumulating wealth,” Amiony said. “Shakepay is uniquely positioned to capture and grow this market and educate Canadians on why bitcoin is one of the most powerful savings tools for the future.”
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