Subscribing to services is a serious bottleneck:
Currently all expenses within Giveth are paid from one credit card that is also used privately. Only two people have access to the credentials and we can’t scale it due to operational risk. What it comes down to is that all subsciptions are handled by System Administration and devops as most subscriptions deal with our IT infrastructure. However - needs by other workgroups are handled inefficiently, or worse, not at all.
Solutions:
The easiest way to solve this is to have a dedicated, crypto native, bank account or at least a service offering a crypto native credit card. The biggest PRO for an actual bank account is that card are quite often canceled/renewed on a whim (if i.e. the card issuer for the financial institute changes) and always have an expiration date which is usually caught only when the first payment fails, or worse, once services go down due to unpaid bills.
Expected duration or delivery date:
We should move fast, because in reality I mentioned this countless times over the past years. However, the ecosystem around us has matured and some good products are available that would manage to have an inflow in crypto and payouts in FIAT.
Research:
A lot of different services exist, but I selected candidates that seem most promising to me, please give your feedback and own suggestions in the comments.
Incorporated bank (US) with crypto capabilites - designed for businesses: Bank Prov
Fintech company (UK) offering both FIAT and crypto accounts (I am using this personally): Wirex
Specialized financial service, catering to DAO needs specifically (thanks for the tip Marko! - this is currently being tested by General Magic, great feature set but seems to have a long road ahead still) Swype
One thing to note: If we go with a service catering to businesses the NonProfit could open and manage the account. For something like Wirex, an individual needs to open the account and then give it to Giveth (there might be volunteers for this, but ofc there is some risk of personal liability)
Great post @geleeroyale ! Good points. Curious, which of the 3 do you recommend? My hunch is opening it up as a business (non profit) is better than as an individual account for signing and permissions capabilities and visibility. Also with individual account that’s a single point of failure like we have now, so thinking doing it as a business is better.
Hey team, I second nominating Swype. There are still in Beta but it’s super simple and the team is very responsive. They give you a Credit card that you can fund from Mainnet, Polygon or Arbitrum. The only catch is that you need to be a US citizen (so one of the US citizens on the team would need to set it up. They just ask you for your SSN and an address). In terms of personal liability, I’m not a lawyer but I think it’s minimal. You’re basically just creating a crypto exchange account (similar to FTX, Binance etc.) and the volume of expenses we have are not super high.
So maybe it’s not necessary for the account to be linked to a physical person and we could go through the DAO to register (I remember someone mentioning Giveth being registered in the US under a 501c3).
Problem is when you click on the ‘How to register a DAO?’ it just takes you to their website where they have no information about it, they just have an email address. I’ll send an email to ask more information about how to register the DAO and get back to post whatever I find out!
Apparently an EIN is an Employer Identification Number, which if you’re registered as a non-profit in the US (501c3) you have one. So that might be the best way to go, I don’t know who has the DAO corporate info to move this forward but I’ll be paying attention to when Swype adds the business feature and keep everyone posted.
The only thing is we have to pay 5% on any money that is routed thru our 501c3.
This is a fine route if we have a donor who wants to give directly to Giveth for a tax deduction… if not taking a 5% hit on every cost is not worth the transition IMO.
We would want a different legal entity… or i could just get a personal account with them and then we have clean accounting.
Getting a personal accout is definitely the easiest option - if you took this on again @Griff at least you had separation in dedication and even that would be a tremendous upgrade from what we have now.
But it should also be said that this accout is for expenses, so it would usually be the thing you write off your tax. Maybe it equals each other out? Depending on VAT?
Last week I met someone from the Gnosis team that told me they are currently working on launching a VISA card that has a non-custodial wallet built in and it will be able to pay with XDAI. I thought it might be interesting to consider this card when it launches for this kind of payments.
usenucleus.io (diff ways of using it) I havent tested it, just came across recently. Accepts MS, or theres a single wallet setup. ( some kyc aspects) but pay via cc from crypto.
I’m Nikhil from Nucleus. Thanks for mentioning us @Giantkin. Had a conversation with @Franco this morning about Nucleus cards for the DAO. Here’s a short explainer on how it works:
Nucleus does pre-funded cards for DAOs. You don’t have to be incorporated to use Nucleus’ DAO card product. To onboard the DAO:
A signer on the multi-sig connects their wallet and completes a KYC
The signer’s KYC is approved within 24 hours
The signer connects the DAO’s multi-sig to Nucleus
The signer creates a new virtual card
A transaction is pushed to the DAO’s multi-sig to fund the card with the designated amount
All signers sign off on the transaction in the Gnosis safe and execute
Go spend with your Visa Debit Card! (It can be added to Apple Pay / Google wallet)
The signer can be American or European (American is preferred). The DAO does not have to be incorporated to sign up for Nucleus. Nucleus does not charge any fees (our monetization model is through interchange revenue). 0.1%-0.5% fee is applied to every transaction by our crypto liquidation provider (this fee does not go to Nucleus). For transactions outside of the US, the typical 1% Visa cross-border fee is applied.
We can support cardholders in limited quantities in any country except the following. But we’re keeping the international rollout small for now. International KYC is also more stringent.
Perfect, that will help the various teammembers see if this helps etc.
also, only one member of the team (or each workgroup etc) would need to kyc and connect. they would be the contact for payouts.
Wonder if the community here would also be interested in checking out Nucleus’ self custody card product: https://www.usenucleus.io/card?
With most crypto cards today, you either have to trust a big centralized exchange by pre-funding your card or go through a bank to off-ramp and spend IRL on bills, rent, food, etc. Our self custody Visa debit card uses ERC20 allowances to pull USDC from the wallet at the time of swipe rather than pre-funding a card. For community members that get paid in crypto, this could be a great way to spend IRL while keeping full custody of funds on-chain.
