Neo EasyCoin. The world first heard of this service from Neo & Bee last year in December,when the company made an official announcement on Bitcointalk, a popular bitcoin message board.
The goal? Make bitcoin accessible around the world by allowing a user to purchase bitcoin without the need for a bank account.
This is how it works (in a nutshell):
Assuming a customer has passed their AML (anti-money laundering) and KYC (know-your-customer) checks, they would be allowed to credit their EasyCoin account with their local currency by paying with cash, credit/debit cards, online wallet services, bank transfers, and pre-paid vouchers “at one of hundreds of thousands of payments locations worldwide.”
From there, the customer would be required to indicate the amount of their local currency to spend in buying bitcoins, followed by executing the order. The digital currency would then be delivered to the end user’s specified address.
For your reference: all of this information is actually available in the LMB Holdings prospectus (version 2, dated 17 March 2014), released Monday.
Of interest is the following statement on page 31:
This service will provide increased accessibility to crypto-currencies across 200 countries including China.
“Including China”
This is fairly interesting, especially given the country is listed as having a contentious view on bitcoin, according to BitLegal.
It raises the question as to whether or not EasyCoin could be the key to further widespread bitcoin expansion in the People’s Republic of China.
What do you think about this?
Elsewhere
According to the announcement from last year, EasyCoin will launch across the “UK, USA, Russia, Denmark, Sweden and Norway” initially — further expanding.
Neo indicates that “EasyCoin is currently under review by FinCEN to determine if the business requires a Money Transmitters License to operate for customers based in the United States.”
Clarity on this front is expected by May of 2014, as projected by Neo’s legal representatives.