Omise, a fintech company, was founded in 2013 and has a project called OmiseGo. The abbreviation for the OmiseGo project is OMG, hence the token issued through this project is also known as OMG coin. The OmiseGO token is based on the Ethereum blockchain and aims to help users "break free from banks," meaning it provides alternative financial and digital commerce tools for everyone. Through OmiseGO, anyone can conduct financial transactions in a fully decentralized and relatively cheaper manner.

Project Highlights

OmiseGO builds a blockchain gateway that includes decentralized trading, liquidity provision mechanisms, settlement information networks, and asset-backed functionality. OmiseGO does not belong to any single entity. Instead, it is an open, distributed network of validating nodes, where these nodes enforce the behavior of all participants within the network.

It uses a protocol token mechanism to create a proof-of-stake blockchain to enable market activities among participants. This high-performance distributed network allows trading across different asset classes – whether they are backed by fiat currency issuers or entirely decentralized blockchain tokens (ERC-20 categories and localized cryptocurrencies). This is a new structure that uses Ethereum-guaranteed settlement activities and leverages Ethereum smart contracts to ensure the historical data of transactions.

OmiseGO is a blockchain network addressing the fundamental coordination problems between payment processors, gateways, and financial institutions. By implementing a large number of OmiseGO services, it provides a new generation of asset transfer services that offer decentralized transactions across different currencies and asset types, across borders and corporate ledgers, at low cost.

Through the OmiseGO network, anyone can flexibly make payments, remittances, salary storage, B2B commerce, supply chain financing, credit systems, asset management and trading, and various on-demand financial services at low cost. Additionally, millions of mainstream users in the Asia-Pacific region, the worlds largest developing economy, will gain access to opportunities that allow them to transition from using fiat currencies to decentralized currencies such as ETH and BTC.

Use Cases

In the current financial system, assets such as money are often locked in a complex web of indirect ownership and delayed settlements. Transferring assets from one party to another typically requires multiple intermediaries engaging in point-to-point interactions and the reconciliation of duplicate ledgers. This consumes a great deal of resources, including time, costs, transparency, security, and irreversibility. OmiseGO aims to solve the coordination issues for a vast number of small to medium-sized payment processors. Large payment processors have significant network effects and exclusivity, while smaller payment processors are more open to internet payments (to expand their smaller networks). Smaller payment processors cannot afford to collaborate with centralized clearinghouses due to high costs and cumbersome management. On the other hand, smaller to medium-sized payments are more willing to open up their networks for OmiseGO to integrate due to cheaper and faster integration and lower operational costs.

The target customer base for the project is 73% of the population in Southeast Asian countries who do not use or lack access to formal financial services (the so-called "unbanked") and the remaining 27% who currently use formal financial services ("banked"). The project team believes that OmiseGo "is by far their best option."

OMG Digital Wallet

A digital wallet is a value storage account where users can store funds for future online transactions such as payments or remittances according to fixed business arrangements. The OmiseGo digital wallet is the best combination of mainstream digital wallets and cryptocurrency wallets, as it enables secure real-time peer-to-peer value exchanges and payment services across different jurisdictions and regulatory barriers, covering both fiat and decentralized currencies.

Any OmiseGo user can conduct financial transactions such as payments, remittances, payroll deposits, B2B commerce, supply chain finance, loyalty programs, asset management and trading, and other on-demand financial services in a fully decentralized and low-cost manner. OmiseGO eliminates the intermediary layer and its associated bureaucracy, allowing valuable assets like currency, loyalty points, game tokens, etc., to circulate in various ways. This opens up possibilities for new financial and value exchange services.

Risks of the Project

1. Intense Competition in Payments
The competition in the Southeast Asian payment sector is already intense. Omise faces competitors such as local payment startups like 2C2P, global payment giants like Stripe, and Chinese players like Alipay and Tencent, which have also expanded into the Southeast Asian payment market, along with numerous smaller payment companies.

2. Regulatory Risk
The payment sector is crucial, and governments regulate it (as is happening domestically with the regulation of third-party payment markets), especially when it comes to cross-border payments, which poses significant legal and regulatory risks.

3. Project Progress Risk
OmiseGO is a complex system. The team has a lot of work to do, such as implementing PoS consensus algorithms, DEX, Plasma, SDK e-wallets, and compliance features. This means there are many risk factors that could lead to delays in the projects release. Additionally, for the product to be successful, it needs proper promotion and market acceptance.