10 Jul 2024
Sling Master Plan
Our mission is to connect billions of people worldwide through effortless, instant, and nearly free global payments. We believe that accomplishing this will enrich the lives of billions of people worldwide.
The technology exists now to make this possible, and we’re building Sling to make that technology available and easy to use for people all over the world.
Our plan to do this:
Ship and grow the world’s first universal P2P payments app. Low-cost, lightning-fast and delightfully simple. Sling uses modern blockchain technology to make international transfers possible at a fraction of the prevailing cost and speed. We will do this across about 150 countries with a combined population of 2.9 billion people.
Move more transactions on-chain. Transfers that happen exclusively on the blockchain are instant and cost almost nothing. We believe that as Sling grows an ever-increasing proportion of transactions will shift to being entirely on-chain – and thus free and truly instant – and that this will open global markets in ways never before imaginable.
Beyond P2P. As our users naturally accrue balances and more transactions shift on-chain, we plan to build additional features to allow our users to spend their balances for everyday purchases at merchants all around the world with both traditional products like debit cards and emerging technologies such as Solana Pay.
We have the team to do this
Executing against this plan requires the application of world-class talent across engineering, software design, product, financial crime, compliance and partnerships along with a level of determination and resilience which is rare. It’s going to be challenging, but we believe we have the right team to make this happen – and we are already well on our way to doing so.
Why now? Technological innovations of the last two decades make Sling possible
Innovations over the past two decades have created the building blocks for an instant global financial system for the first time in history, enabling money to evolve from a digital good to an internet good.
Modern blockchains are fast and inexpensive and provide globally available shared ledgers that can be trusted by all market participants.
Self-custody technology means anyone can hold digital money on their own devices and move that money freely, without relying on custodians or external institutions for support.
High-quality, regulated stablecoins exist which can be held in self-custody wallets, allowing for a separation of concerns between payment services and custody services.
Digital identity verification, blockchain analytics, travel rule data networks and transaction monitoring software now exist which allow for sanctions, anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing compliance at scale across a global footprint.
Most countries now have domestic real-time payment systems and crypto exchanges which allow anyone to exchange high quality stablecoins and local fiat currency seamlessly and instantly.
We believe now is the time to assemble these pieces together into an easy-to-use package, and we are building Sling to make this a reality.
How does Sling make money?
Our goal is to be the lowest cost provider in the market. We promise to always be transparent and upfront with our pricing and to pass on the efficiency gains offered by modern technology to our users.
Money that is already in a Sling wallet can be sent completely free and instantly to any other Sling wallet in any of 148 countries.
We will charge fees where we incur costs, which is typically when we convert between fiat and stablecoins. We will keep these fees as low as possible and target being half the cost – or less – of what traditional money transfer companies charge for equivalent end-to-end fiat payments.
In some cases we earn a yield on stablecoins that are held within Sling wallets.
Over time we expect to add additional revenue-generating features such as debit cards, and premium software features and more.
We are building a competitive, sustainable business at scale
We have partnered with leading global payment providers and stablecoin issuers to leverage modern blockchain technology in a way which allows us to sustainably offer lower prices and faster transactions than competitors using traditional technology.
We’re incredibly excited to be building Sling, and we hope you’ll try it to experience the magic for yourself.
Sling. It’s money well sent.
Try it now