In front of the entrance to rue Linois there is a discreet sign with the inscription: “Cryptocurrency settles in Beaugrenelle”. The spectators’ heads turn to the sign in amazement. Behind this phrase is an unprecedented operation carried out by the shopping center in partnership with start-up Lyzi, allowing its cryptocurrencies to be transformed into vouchers. Something to attract the attention of passersby. “I saw 3, 4 curious customers who asked me what Lyzi is”, confirms a shopkeeper installed next to the panel. The game “hunting for cryptocurrencies”, which promises a small reward to participants, piques the curiosity of customers even more.
The team that organized this animation set up a pop-up store, which runs until July 8, on the first floor of the Beaugrenelle shopping centre. A small booth displaying large cryptocurrency logos is next to the stairs leading to the second floor. “The shopping center offers you a 10% bonus if you download our app”, proclaims Damien Patureaux, founder of Lyzi, the (very) young start-up that launches its app this Wednesday.
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The enthusiasm is there, despite the somewhat chaotic start. “We had an electricity problem this morning. The lights and screens didn’t work”, confide the pop-up store’s animators. But the whims of the show didn’t discourage the team at this ten-person start-up. Sébastien Estines, Lyzi’s commercial director, confesses that he is really happy because “we sold our first card this morning!”. But what is this famous card?
Convert your cryptocurrencies into gift cards
Based on the cryptocurrency platform Zebitex, Lyzi offers the conversion of a user’s cryptocurrency into vouchers valid at all stores in the Beaugrenelle mall. For this, nothing could be simpler: just download the application from the Apple Store or Google Play Store and indicate the value you want to convert. Currently, 21 different cryptocurrencies are managed by the app.
The app @Lyzi_app that offers to convert your cryptocurrencies into vouchers has just been launched! How to use the app? Damien Patureaux explains to us: pic.twitter.com/P8h4Qr2Bpt
— Maxime Heuze (@HeuzeMaxime) June 8, 2022
Companies like Coinbase, Crypto.com, Revolut or even Lydia already offer to pay for our daily purchases through a credit card that converts cryptocurrencies to euros during checkout. But Lyzi is the only company that offers the conversion of cryptocurrencies into gift cards, in partnership with a shopping mall. An offer that may seem innocuous at first glance, but Sébastien Estines warns: “We want to go much further and allow people tomorrow to buy a t-shirt on a website with their cryptocurrencies but also use their loyalty cards in the app and receive rewards NFTs when you make a certain number of purchases.” For the mall, this is a win-win project. “We want to convert people acquired in digital to become loyal physical customers”, says Stéphane Briosne, director of Beaugrenelle Paris.
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Towards a democratization of cryptocurrencies?
According to a survey by the European Central Bank, 6% of French people own cryptocurrencies. The French start-up, which wants to take advantage of this moment, does not hide its ambitions: “We want to speak with more than 90% of French people who do not have cryptocurrencies and especially with those who do not know how to buy them”, says Sebastien Estines. Not a simple goal according to Alexandre Stachchenko, Blockchain and Crypto Director at KPMG France. “The adoption of paying with crypto is today hampered by restrictive taxation and because there is a construction around scarcity that pushes people not to spend their cryptocurrencies”, evaluates the expert. But by settling in Beaugrenelle, Lyzi intends to take a first step and introduce cryptocurrencies into consumer habits.