No fees and commissions explained

How is Beans able to charge no fees?

Beans makes use of the stellar blockchain, which means that all the administrative work is done by the blockchain itself. An advantage of the Stellar blockchain is that using it is super cheap; the average transaction costs about ~$0.00022551. This is so cheap that Beans can pay for all the transactions you do! 

How is Beans able to charge no commission?

Beans operates as a startup and gets its funding from the Stellar Development Foundation (SCF). This allows the Beans team to work and expand on Beans without needing to profit from its users. And, because the SCF is a non-profit organization they do not have a profit interest in Beans, which means Beans is free to make its own choices. 

Why do I see commissions when I want to deposit and withdraw!?

Beans has partners around the world that allow users in those countries to deposit and withdraw their local currency to the app (for example Mykobo (EU) or Anclap (ARS)). These partners operate independently from Beans and are allowed to charge a small fee whenever you use their service. As long as you keep your funds in Beans, every operation you do is free! Moving your money from and to the app will cost a small amount of money every time you move it. 

How can Beans offer the best available exchange rate?

Because Beans is built on the Stellar network, we are able to trade currencies on the open market. The exchange rates are as close to the real world as possible. You get the best exchange rate possible, without us taking a portion of it! That is also why the value of government-controlled currencies are not reflected in Beans; they simply follow their open-market value!

How will Beans make money in the future?

We are exploring ways to release a potential utility token in Beans, implement premium features, or create a tiered plan towards heavy usage users. However, we will always make sure that the normal user is able to make free cross-border and cross-currency transactions!