In front of the entrance to rue Linois appears a cautious sign with the inscription: “Cryptocurrency lived in Beaugrenelle”. The heads of the spectators turned towards the sign in amazement. Behind this sentence is an unprecedented operation conducted by the shopping center in partnership with start-up Lyzi, which allows its cryptocurrencies to be turned into vouchers. Something that catches the attention of passersby. “I saw 3, 4 curious customers who asked me what Lyzi was”, confirmed a salesperson installed next to the panel. The “crypto hunt” game, which promises a small reward to the participants, further arouses the curiosity of the customers.
The team that organized this animation set up a pop-up store, to be held until July 8, on the first floor of the Beaugrenelle shopping center. A small booth displaying large cryptocurrency logos stands on the side of the staircase towards the second floor. “The shopping center offers you a 10% bonus if you download our app”, announced Damien Patureaux, the founder of Lyzi, the (very young) start-up that launches its application this Wednesday .
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The enthusiasm was there despite the somewhat chaotic start. “We had a power problem this morning. The lights and the screens didn’t work “, confess to the animators of the pop-up store. But the vagaries of the show did not weaken within this start-up team of ten people. Sébastien Estines, the Lyzi’s commercial director, even admitted that he was very happy because “we sold our first card this morning!”. But what is this famous card?
Convert your cryptocurrencies into gift cards
Based on the Zebitex cryptocurrency platform, Lyzi offers to convert the user’s cryptocurrency into vouchers that are valid at all stores in the Beaugrenelle shopping center. To do this, nothing could be simpler: just download the application from the Apple Store or the Google Play Store and indicate the amount you want to convert. 21 different cryptocurrencies are currently managed by the application.
The app @Lyzi_app offering to convert its cryptocurrencies into vouchers has just launched! How to use the app? Damien Patureaux explained to us: pic.twitter.com/P8h4Qr2Bpt
– Maxime Heuze (@HeuzeMaxime) June 8, 2022
Companies like Coinbase, Crypto.com, Revolut or even Lydia are already offering to pay for our day-to-day purchases via credit cards that convert cryptocurrencies into euros while check out. But Lyzi is the only company that offers to convert cryptocurrencies into gift cards, in partnership with a shopping center. An offer that may seem harmless at first glance, but Sébastien Estines warns: “We want to go further and allow people tomorrow to buy a t-shirt on a site using their cryptocurrencies but also use their cryptocurrencies. loyalty card in the application and receive reward NFTs when you make a certain number of purchases ”. For the mall, this is a win-win project. “We want to convert digitally acquired people so that they become loyal physical customers,” said Stéphane Briosne, director of Beaugrenelle Paris.
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Towards a democratization of cryptocurrencies?
According to a European Central Bank survey, 6% of French hold cryptocurrencies. The French start-up, which wants to take advantage of this momentum, has not hidden its ambitions: “We want to talk to more than 90% of French people who do not have cryptocurrencies and especially to those who do not know how to buy them ”, says Sebastien Estines. Far from a simple goal according to Alexandre Stachchenko, Blockchain and director of cryptos at KPMG France. “The adoption of payment using cryptos is now hampered by strict taxation and because there is a construction around the deficit that drives people not to spend their cryptocurrencies”, the expert estimates. But by settling on Beaugrenelle, Lyzi intends to take the first step and introduce cryptocurrencies into consumer habits.