Fiapay is a mobile wallet that can send money to your friends, family, and almost anyone else in the world. We have chosen XDR (or Special Drawing Rights) as a functional currency of our wallet and we encourage you to educate yourself about XDR, on this site and elsewhere.

XDR is an international ISO symbol for Special Drawing Rights, a unit of account of the International Monetary Fund. XDR is a basket of five most popular global currencies, namely, US Dollar, Euro, Japanese Yen, Chinese Yuan, and British Pound. IMF reviews the basket every five years and its value against any other major currency is published by the IMF on a daily basis.

IMF maintains a section of its site dedicated to Special Drawing Rights. There you can find daily exchange rates as well as other useful information. Wikipedia maintains a fairly informative article here. There is also a decent body of academic research into XDR, which we will review and post in our Blog section.

You can easily fund your account with Bitcoin. All you need to do is choose "Request BTC" in the wallet menu; a keyboard will appear for you to type in the desired amount of BTC (its approximate XDR equivalent will be displayed as well). Once you have entered the amount, choose the QR icon at the bottom of the screen and the appropriate QR code will be generated. You can generate a simple string BTC address without entering any amount, by choosing the Copy icon at the bottom of the screen, and a one-time BTC address will be displayed (and copied into your phone's clipboard).

Alternatively, choose "Request XDR" in the menu, and request XDR directly from an existing Fiapay customer, by choosing their email address or a mobile number in your address book. Please note, that we will not send your request to anyone who is not already a customer.

Yes, absolutely. Just choose "Send XDR", enter the desired amount to be sent, and type in the recipient's email or mobile number (you can use your phone's address book as well). We strongly encourage you to only send funds to the people you know. To prevent abuse, minimum amounts apply to any outgoing payments.

If the person you're sending XDR to does not have a Fiapay account yet, they will receive an invitation to open one, and if approved, will be notified of your payment. They may choose to reject your payment, in which case the entire amount will be returned to you.

Currently there are two ways of spending with Fiapay. You can either send XDR to someone else with a Fiapay account (or someone willing to open one); sending XDR is instant and there are no fees associated with it. Or you can pay anyone who accepts Bitcoin. In the latter case, you will need the recipient's BTC address, as a string or a QR code, and enough XDR in your account to purchase the required amount of BTC. Before sending any BTC out, we will show you the exact amount of XDR that will be debited from your account. Considering the irreversible nature of any Bitcoin payment, we impose transactional and temporal limits on how much you can withdraw.

We are currently working to add a major payment card as an optional spending route for Fiapay. Expect this to be available in Q2 2017 as a physical card or a virtual card number. Subject to separate agreement, such card may not be available in every country where we operate.

While we are not offering to exchange traditional (or "fiat") currencies into XDR at this point, you can easily track the value of your XDR against any major currency. IMF publishes daily valuation at noon London time, while quote dissemination services such as Bloomberg and Reuters publish real-time XDR exchange rates.

There is no established market for BTC/XDR, therefore we will exchange your BTC into XDR using the rate derived by exchanging Bitcoin into the five constituent currencies. At the bottom of Fiapay's menu, you will see an indicative BTC/XDR exchange rate, which is based on the actual VWAP exchange rate during the past 24 hours. Please treat it with caution, as an indication only.

Prior to any deposit, we will show you how much XDR will be credited to your account for any amount of BTC actually deposited (minus blockchain fees and our commission), provided such amount is paid immediately. The actual amount of XDR you will receive in your account may and, often will, differ, as the exchange rate is likely to move between the time your payor sends you BTC and the time such BTC is received by us and confirmed by blockchain.

If you request to withdraw BTC from your account, we will show you the exact amount of XDR you will be charged, and the exact amount of BTC that will be credited to the destination BTC address.

There are no fees to send or receive XDR within our system. We charge a flat fee of 1% for our service when you deposit BTC in your account, or when you withdraw BTC to an external address (or pay for goods and services using Bitcoin).

In addition, every time you deposit BTC into your account, we purchase the corresponding amounts of USD, EUR, JPY, CNH, and GBP in the open market. Any spread and broker commission is passed on to you. Furthermore, the Bitcoin network imposes its own fees on sending BTC to you (or to your payee), and such fees are also borne by you. Please see our usage notes for ways to minimize your costs.

Unlike traditional foreign exchange markets, we operate 24/7. In practical terms it means that during weekends or bank holidays we exchange your incoming or outgoing Bitcoin in highly illiquid markets. While every effort is being made to provide the best available execution for you, we recommend you minimize BTC deposits or withdrawals during weekends and bank holidays (as they are observed in the United Kingdom). This does not impact any payments made in XDR, however, as no exchange is involved in transfers within Fiapay.

Every BTC transaction incurs blockchain fees, which are calculated dynamically, based on the current state of the blockchain. If you are familiar with Bitcoin it should come as no surprise to you that the blockchain cost of sending a payment does not necessarily depend on its value; rather, on a fairly complex combination of factors. Our general advice to you is to avoid sending or receiving small BTC payments using Fiapay.

More specifically, you should not receive BTC payments smaller than BTC0.001 into your Fiapay account; such amounts will not be credited to you, nor will they be refunded to the sender.

For your safety, and unless otherwise communicated to you, we will limit the amount of any Bitcoin withdrawal to BTC0.5, and the same limit will apply to any series of Bitcoin withdrawals during any consecutive 60 minutes. Fiapay accounts with established history may qualify for higher withdrawal limits.

During the beta testing we will allow anyone with an Android device to register for our service. To keep you safe, we will need to verify your name and other data using a third-party verification service. Therefore, be prepared to provide your full name, date of birth, country of residence, and contact details, such as your mobile phone and email address. As a final step, you will be asked to take a photograph of your government-issued ID (usually, a machine-readable passport), which you can do right in the Fiapay app. As soon as these details are submitted we will review your data and send you a confirmation email with a one-time password. In the rare event that we are unable to open an account for you, we will advise you accordingly.

As soon as you receive a welcome email from us, you can log into Fiapay. Please note that we will send you a verification sms, again, to ensure that no one other than you can gain access to your account. Once verified, you will need to change a one-time password provided by us to a password of your own. IMPORTANT: we cannot stress enough that your password should be a unique combination of characters (at least six) that you will be required to type in every time you want to use your wallet. Please read the Security section below for more tips on securing your account and data.

In some instances we may require further verification of your identity. Please understand that this is being done for your own protection, as well as to ensure that we provide a safe environment for all of our users.

We provide XDR as a centralized virtual currency and are not, presently, regulated by the FCA or any other similar authority. We are, however, bound by various anti-money-laundry regulations and, therefore, screen all of our potential customers against the UN, US, and EU sanctions lists. We look at your country of residence to establish whether we can serve you. Citizens and permanent residents ("green card holders") of the United States are not eligible for Fiaton, irrespective of their actual country of residence.

IMPORTANT: it is your responsibility to ensure that by opening an account with us you are fully compliant with any applicable laws and regulations. When in doubt, seek independent legal, accounting, and tax advice.

Your Fiapay is only as secure as your phone. If you lose your phone you should assume that your account is compromised, even if your password is unique. Therefore, you must notify us immediately if you believe that your phone is ever lost or stolen. If Fiapay (or any other mobile wallet) is installed on your phone, treat it as you would treat a physical wallet full of paper currency.

During the first log in, we will ask you to choose your own password. Make sure it is NOT your date of birth, your mother's name, your phone number, or any other popular, but easily discoverable, identifier. Ideally, your password will consist of letters, numbers, and special characters (such as #$%^* etc). You can make your password longer than 6 characters but you should be able to memorize it without writing it down. Do NOT, under any circumstances, re-use the password you're already using for any other service (such as an email or a social media profile). The vast majority of compromised accounts are a direct result of passwords stolen elsewhere (think Yahoo, LinkedIn, and similar breaches) being opportunistically tested against the same email credentials.

Your Android phone connects to our servers using a TLS protocol, meaning that the data your wallet sends and receives is encrypted. This also includes the personal data provided by you during registration. While TLS connection is generally considered secure, you need to make sure that there is no malware/spyware present on your phone. You should regularly update your Android system and install any security patches as soon as they become available. It is a good idea, generally, to invest in the security/anti-virus software, especially if you use your phone as your wallet.

Even though your connection is encrypted, you should avoid using Fiapay while connected through someone else's WiFi. You are safer when using mobile data (such as 3G or LTE); or use VPN if you must connect via WiFi. In countries where government interference is expected, you should use a reliable VPN at all times.

Please read our Privacy Policy carefully.

Fiapay offers privacy, not anonymity. We collect your personal data and - when you send or receive XDR within our network - pass some of it (e.g. your name) to your Fiapay counterpart. We store your data and may be legally required to disclose it to relevant authorities in the United Kingdom.

While we also support Bitcoin payments, we would like to remind you that Bitcoin is not anonymous. Please inform yourself about privacy and security issues associated with Bitcoin; this summary is a good starting point, but much more technical and comprehensive analysis can easily be found elsewhere.