Why are you participating for Based SEA?

To build cool dapps that benefit Singapore, our local community, as well as to push towards an on-chain future.

What challenges are you focusing on?

Singapore is known to take a very proactive approach with regards to figuring out regulations revolving around blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. A prime example is MAS’s Project Guardian, a pioneering initiative to explore the use of public blockchains for financial asset tokenization. Additionally, StraitsX, a licensed Major Payment Institution by the MAS, issues XSGD which is a stablecoin that is pegged 1:1 to the Singaporean Dollar (SGD). Projects such as StraitsX helps ease the friction when onboarding Singapore locals on-chain

However, there is a lack of a convenient and cheap method for consumers to spend crypto in real life. Expanding beyond Singapore and looking globally, there is also a lack of an international payment service. Currently, e-payment services are silo’ed e.g. Paylah & PayNow in Singapore, WeChat Pay & Alipay in China, KakaoPay in Korea etc. More often than not tourists do not have access to these localised payment services.

We think that crypto can address this gap. What we are building at BasePay is a payment service that will be integrated internationally one day, offering users a seamless payment experience anywhere in the world.

How does your submission address this challenge?

Context: Singapore Quick Response Code (SGQR)

Co-owned by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), SGQR is Singapore’s unified payment QR code. It combines multiple payment QR codes into a single SGQR label, making QR e-payments simple for both consumers and merchants.

Local merchants are required to first link their Unique Entity Number (UEN) to their business account before registering for an SGQR. This means that each SGQR is unique and linked to a business entity. We drew inspiration from this design, allowing merchants to be onboarded to BasedPay easily via their unique SGQRs.

Solution: BasedPay

For merchants, BasedPay serves as a one-stop shop for processing crypto payments. The onboarding process is highly simplified and expedited. Merchants are only required to scan their unique SGQR code, enter a 2FA code sent via SMS and input their Basename of choice before signing a transaction on-chain. Once this is done, the merchant’s Smart Wallet would be created and their business can now begin accepting crypto payments. To enhance the user experience, we also added a notification after each successful transaction.

For users, there is little to no onboarding to be done. Simply log in to our platform using your preferred crypto wallet and scan the SGQRs just as one would normally, except that this time you get the luxury to transact in crypto!

Importance to the community

The impact of BasedPay is transformative for both merchants and consumers, providing a frictionless, global payment solution that bridges the gap between crypto and everyday transactions. By leveraging Singapore's SGQR system and simplifying the onboarding process for businesses, BasedPay enables local merchants to accept cryptocurrency with ease. This integration paves the way for crypto to become a mainstream payment method, eliminating the fragmentation seen in traditional payment services across different regions.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into several issues.

Firstly, we struggle to find the most apt challenge in our community to address. We wanted to find a hurdle that we can best address using blockchain tech. As homegrown Singaporeans, we put our heads together to think about the best ways we can utilise blockhain tech in our daily lives. Finally, we scope into consumer payments via the familiar SGQR - we wanted to ensure that our submission was truly meanningful and impactful.

Secondly, this was one of our first few times building on Base. Overall the techincal documentation was great and we would totally do it agian. However, there were some unfamiliarities that proved to be slightly challenging such as the integration of basenames in our application, as well as the lack of a Uniswap v2 frontend on Base Sepolia.

Additional Features

NA - our project is new and we started from scratch