Inspiration
The Limitations of Using Traditional Payment Systems
All institutions - large or small - rely on the ability to send and receive payments, but all too often the technology they rely on is cumbersome, expensive, and slow. Even modern fintechs - in particular those with cross-border payment solutions built on top of traditional payment rails - require large amounts of upfront capital to service the international payment processing demand of their corporate clients. The financial burden from these expensive infrastructure solutions are then translated onto smaller businesses that may not have sufficient transaction volumes necessary to sustain the payment processing costs.
Introduction of the XRP Ledger
The open-source deployment of the XRP ledger supplied a completely new and modern carbon-negative payment rail for fintechs to expedite cheaper transaction costs, faster settlement times, and improved visibility.
Challenges preventing widespread B2B Adoption via XRPL
Currently, two main challenges are preventing the widespread adoption of the XRP ledger for facilitating commercial value transfers between businesses:
- Risk that private digital currency issuers might become bankrupt and lose customers’ assets.
- The lack of applications that currently support payment processing for accounts receivable (AR) & accounts payable (AP) management with XRP Ledger transactions, especially for CBDCs.
Solutions to Increase Widespread Adoption of XRP Ledger Railing
Retail CBDCs are estimated to arrive by the end of 2025
According to investopedia, “Retail CBDCs are governed-backed digital currencies used by consumers and businesses. Retail CBDCs eliminate intermediary risk”. Central banks across the world are at various stages of CBDC development. Some central banks are experimenting with Ripple’s CBDC solution i.e. hosting private side-chains.
Checksum provides CBDC-compliant payment management for businesses
According to whirledlabs, “today’s payment processing platforms are not experienced supporting CBDCs and its required infrastructure. Checksum’s UI features & back-end will provide businesses with a B2B payment platform to easily manage checks, invoices, expenses, and payroll with CBDCs as a payment option.”
Checksum provides advanced features & intuitive UX for increased adoption
Many experts in the industry are constantly iterating the importance of good UX for increasing widespread user adoption (both for end users and retail). In general, products and services that are simple, intuitive, and easy to use are more successful at conversion rates. In order for checksum to unleash the power of advanced payment types and configurations that are enabled by the XRP blockchain; UIs & common features from other popular payment platforms were analyzed (see table 1), and subsequent UI dashboard designs and main features for Checksum were created as a result.
Table 1: Analysis of various Payment/Accounting Software Platforms
| App Name | Description | Advantages | Disadvantages |
| Request.Finance | Invoice Man. Platform with crypto | smart contracts for programming employee payroll | No XRPL support |
| PaymentX | Simple Crypto Payroll | Simple UI for navigation | Not comprehensive |
| Quickbooks | Industry Standard Accounting software | Comprehensive invoice management | Not ready to support CBDCs & tokens |
| Uphold | Trade & Hold Digital Assets | Intuitive UI for currency interoperability | Not a B2B management software |
| TransferMate | B2B Global payments | Quicker payments & competitive FX | Large infrastructure costs for Fiat-based cross-border pymts |
| China e-CNY wallet | The official CBDC wallet in China. Feel like a crypto wallet | Friendly UI & Fiat interoperability | Not blockchain based |
What it does
Checksum is an all-in-one B2B CBDC Compliant Payment Solution
In anticipation of CBDCs and an apparent gap in current payment rail integrations with them, we’re providing a comprehensive POC for a unique AR/AP B2B payment management platform that is deeply integrated with the XRP Ledger to unleash advanced payment management functionality for businesses.
High-Level Design Architecture (LucidChart)
Sample Architecture Design Workflows (LucidChart)
Core Platform Capabilities
Description: For in-app screenshots, click on hyperlink.
Checksum Spend Management
| L1 Capabilities —> | L2 Capabilities |
| OVERVIEW | |
| BALANCE | |
| INFLOWS | |
| OUTFLOWS |
Checksum Invoice Management
| L1 Categories —> | L2 Capabilities |
| INVOICES | |
| SENT INVOICES | |
| RECEIVED INVOICES | |
| CLIENTS | |
| VENDORS | |
| NEW INVOICE |
Checksum Payroll Management
| L1 Categories —> | L2 Capabilities |
| PAYROLL | |
| EMPLOYEES | |
| CONTRACTORS | |
| NEW PAYMENT |
Checks
| L1 Categories —> | L2 Capabilities |
| CHECKS | |
| SENT | |
| RECEIVED | |
| NEW CHECK |
Checksum Advanced Features Unlocks Native XRP Ledger Functionality
| L1 Categories —> | L2 Capabilities |
| ADVANCED | |
| ACCOUNTS | |
| NETWORK | |
| AUTHORIZATION | |
| TRUSTLINES | |
| MULTISIGN |
Checksum Settings
| L1 Categories —> | L2 Capabilities |
| SETTINGS | |
| GENERAL | |
| ROLES | |
| SECURITY | |
| ACTIVITY |
Table 3: Action Cards (not in the tables above)
Live TRUSTLINES (on testnet) & visualized in our app interface
mUSD
TESTNET rEDwSU8XATzhVuwg19ykFqEoD7zHqFYL5n
mCOP
TESTNET rUDNh91qQqMQVJKNBymhzkMsahjkAAMsox
mEUR
TESTNET rUavdV9qC7f7z6aYPShJebfypyL3UCjNPK
mFIM
TESTNET rKVS7kbe2Uujz4sAt8a1Pw9UexsS8r1e8q
mJPN
TESTNET rU568Njo384ChDBzxwzdhHiaK8drXCnA7A
If you click on the token, it will take you to the issuing account
For bank of Japan (POC)
TESTNET rLVBQjwG9MB9nJcmUdYKS9AVsqEKaAyCg2
How we built it
Iterative Product Development Life Cycle
Requirement Gathering (table 1)
took roughly 0.5 weeks and years of prior experience
Architecture Workflow (with LucidCharts)
Took 2 weeks & constantly updated requirements
Checksum UI (with Figma)
1 week to subsequently design
Build (with Nextjs)
We only had 1 week & 1 dev to develop the app & wireframes
Total Estimated Time to go from zero was ~4.5 weeks
Code Tree - High Level
│
│ README.md
│ tsconfig.json
│ next.config,json
│ .eslintrc.json
│ .prettierrc
│ ...
│
└───api :file_folder:
│ │ assets :file_folder:
│ │ controller :file_folder:
│ │ constants :file_folder:
│ │ services :file_folder:
│ │ helpers :file_folder:
│ │
│ └───middleware :file_folder:
│ │ authorize
│ │ error
│ │ logger
│ │ validate
│
└───src :file_folder:
│ │ components :file_folder:
│ │ context :file_folder:
│ │ hooks :file_folder:
│ │ lib :file_folder:
│ │ pages / api :file_folder:
│ │ services :file_folder:
│ │ styles :file_folder:
│
└───config :file_folder:
│ │ env.ts
│ │ index.ts
│ │ wallets.ts
│
└───prisma :file_folder:
│ │ schema.prisma
│
...markdown
Accomplishments We're Proud of:
1. Value Demonstrated in all 3 Submission Categories
Interoperability
Checksum is a solution to enable CBDCs to work functionally with the XRPL
- Demonstrated this with the mCBDC trustlines deployed on the testnet
- Our solution demonstrates cross-border mCBDC transactions for businesses
- Users can authorize multiple mCBDC trustlines in the same wallet
- We plan to facilitate CBDC on-ramps by enabling users to connect a bank accounts and convert mFiat for mCBDC (like Coinbase does today for depositing cash from a connected bank to buy USDC at zero cost)
Retail-Facing
We built an interface for any human to interact with a CBDC, as demonstrated with our ability to add mCBDC trustlines and “request” or “send payment” in the mCBDC of choice.
- Our fintech solution can provide powerful payment processing capabilities and AR/AP management at a fraction of the cost and with reduced complexity, compared to traditional payment platforms. This may help to “level the playing field” for businesses and individuals of underbanked communities and developing nations.
- CBDC Integration capabilities with Checksum:
- Offline payment capabilities
- Integration into the XRPL blockchain & future capability to connect bank accounts for Fiat to mCBDC conversions or vice versa or
- Enabling a digital forms of managing checks
- We were particularly focused on incorporating an intuitive UI for Checksum in order to facilitate ease of use
- We have the feature to recover wallets with a seed phrase
- Privacy
- Pre-Authorization (insert link to documentation) is a feature that allows AR departments to limit incoming payments for only “pre-authorized clients”. What happens if a payment is sent from a non pre-authorized client? The payment is simply rejected and bounced back to the sender. The use-case here is to increase compliance & control of inflows.
Financial Inclusion
As we have alluded to in the interoperability category, our solution is a web3 powered platform which makes it much more lightweight (in terms of infrastructure costs & maintenance) and available to anyone with access to an internet connection.
- Revenue: We may incorporate a dynamic and variable revenue model by invoicing our users at the end of the month with an extremely reasonable and proportionate bill based on the volume of transactions they made. It’s possible that below a certain threshold (demo period of time), we could offer our service for free in order to successfully onboard and retain more users, especially those small businesses that are not previously familiar with using accounting software.
- We will bring accounting & banking-like services to underserved populations
- Equalize spending power from traditionally marginalized communities through CBDCs. Ex: An all-in-one robust payment platform solution for managing your account receivable and accounts payable operations.
2. Scalable Design & Functionality that kept Enterprise in mind
We kept long-term scalability in mind when designing the layout for Checksum’s feature designs so that additional configurations to L1 Application Capabilities and L2 Application Capabilities could be managed seamlessly.
- Another thing we are really proud of is our ability to demonstrate the in-app UI layouts for this hackathon submission.
- In addition, we are also very excited in our demo video to be able to demonstrate our automated email messaging for the following scenarios:
- Confirming Emails for New Users when registering
- Automating the AP process for sending invoices automatically via email
- The Client will have a payment button on their email that will enable them to settle the invoice
- Furthermore, emails play a key role in our back-end database for tracking unique user identities. We can also identify the relationship between users on our platforms through email
- Lastly, we differentiate from mature web3 platforms like Request.Finance in that we are creating user roles for corporations to be able to have multiple users access the same account. Thus providing features such as:
- Multi-sig wallet
- Admin level security controls
- Varying degrees of access depending on user roles
- I.e. limit dedicated AR & AP teams to their corresponding sections of the platform
Challenges that we ran into
- Time: if we had more time we could have built more features out. We had to restrict ourselves due to the deadline.
- Developing functionality with the application’ database & with the ledger was an extremely lengthy process that required a lot of careful consideration and time to develop fully (many attributes in the application’s different sections have dependencies).
- Planning & Designing the entire system was quite an extensive process and challenge I.e. identifying required features. We’re happy with the results at the moment but there can definitely be room for improvement.
- Missing mCBDC Swapping, Dex integration, Payroll Automation with hooks, demonstrate Fiat to CBDC conversions by connecting bank accounts… these are features that will be necessary to develop at some point but not possible at the moment with our small team’s resource constraints for phase 1
What's next for Checksum:
- Continue to build out the rest of platform’s various L1 & L2 Capabilities
- Beta test with a few users to improve and iterate the platform
- Improve and iterate
- Get to phase 2 of the CBDC hackathon
- Grow & innovate
Built With
- docker
- mongodb
- nextjs
- prisma
- typescript
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