What is Flexa?
The payment network that lets you spend crypto at real stores. Instantly, with no chargebacks, no intermediaries, and no new hardware for merchants.
A New Kind of Payment Network
What if you could spend crypto as easily as swiping a credit card?
In late 2018, four fintech veterans looked at the payments industry and saw something broken[1]. Credit cards had barely changed since the 1970s. Meanwhile, trillions of dollars sat in digital wallets with no way to spend them at a register. Daniel McCabe, Tyler Spalding, Trevor Filter, and Zachary Kilgore founded Flexa in New York City to bridge that gap.
Their pitch: accept any digital asset — Bitcoin, Ethereum, stablecoins, loyalty points — get paid in dollars, instantly, with zero risk of chargebacks. No new hardware. No crypto expertise. Plug Flexa into the POS system you already have and start accepting 99+ digital assets across 13 blockchains.
Flexa built the rail[1]. It runs like Visa — merchant gets guaranteed funds in seconds, barcode scanners handle checkout — but settles on-chain. Flexa has gone live at over 40,000 retail locations without a single hardware install.
The Merchant Wish List
If the biggest retailers in America could design a payment rail from scratch, what would they ask for?
Picture yourself running a retail chain. Every card swipe sends money through 12+ intermediaries — issuing banks, acquiring banks, card networks, processors, fraud detection services — each taking a cut. US credit and debit card swipe fees totaled $187.2 billion in 2024, up from $172B the year before[13]. For most merchants, this is the single largest operating cost after labor.
— Daniel McCabe, Flexa cofounder & former CEO
Lower fees. You're paying 3–4% on every transaction. You want that under 1%. Ideally a flat rate, no hidden interchange tiers, no mid-qualified surcharges.
Top 10 US retailers alone: ~$24.3 billion per year.
See how savings scale across adoption scenarios. If card volume shifted to a rail charging half the current rate, these savings go straight to merchants' net income.
| Company | Revenue† | Card → Flexa* | Annual Savings | % Net Inc. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Walmart WMT | $706B | 1.04%→0.52% | $183M | +1.1% |
| Amazon AMZN | $296B | 1.12%→0.56% | $83M | +0.1% |
| Kroger KR | $148B | 1.31%→0.66% | $49M | +2.2% |
| Home Depot HD | $165B | 1.24%→0.62% | $51M | +0.3% |
| Costco COST | $275B | 0.99%→0.49% | $68M | +0.9% |
| Target TGT | $105B | 1.36%→0.68% | $36M | +0.9% |
| Walgreens WBA | $148B | 0.93%→0.47% | $34M | N/M |
| Lowe's LOW | $86B | 1.28%→0.64% | $28M | +0.4% |
| Albertsons ACI | $80B | 1.35%→0.68% | $27M | +2.9% |
| CVS CVS | $139B | 1.38%→0.69% | $48M | +1.1% |
| Top 10 total | $607M | |||
*Card rate derived from the Flexa whitepaper (2016 payment processing costs ÷ 2016 revenue), applied to current revenues.
†Most recent 10-K. Amazon = net product sales only (excludes AWS & advertising). CVS = Pharmacy & Consumer Wellness segment only (excludes Aetna/PBM).
‡Flexa rate is illustrative — assumed at half the implied card rate. Enterprise pricing varies. N/M: Walgreens posted a net loss of $8.6B in FY2024; no FY2025 10-K filed (company taken private by Sycamore Partners).
No chargebacks. A single chargeback costs you more than 2× the original transaction after fees, penalties, and lost inventory[22]. For every $1 of fraud, you lose $3 in total costs[21]. In 2024, 80% of organizations were targeted by payment fraud[14]. You want guaranteed payments that can never be reversed.
Instant settlement. Right now you wait 2–3 business days for your money. That's cash flow sitting in someone else's account. You want to get paid at the time of purchase.
No new hardware. You have tens of thousands of registers with barcode scanners that work fine. Whatever this new rail is, it needs to plug into what you've already got.
No liability for customer data. Every data breach costs millions. You'd rather not store customer payment information at all.
Meanwhile, $27 trillion moved through stablecoins in 2024, surpassing Visa and Mastercard's combined volume[3]. About 65 million Americans hold crypto[3,20], but almost none gets spent at stores. Bitcoin takes an hour to confirm. Ethereum takes 12–15 minutes. No cashier waits for that.
12+ intermediaries touch each transaction
Merchants pay 3–4% per swipe
Your payment settles in 2–3 business days
Chargebacks cost merchants 2×+ the original amount
Your payment data goes to multiple parties
Direct: wallet → Flexa → merchant. No middlemen.
Merchants pay under 1% per transaction
Your payment settles instantly
Zero chargebacks. Ever. (Collateral-guaranteed.)
No payment data shared with the merchant
How It Works
A five-step walkthrough from wallet to settlement.
You open your wallet app
Any Flexa-enabled wallet: Coinbase, Zashi, or 500+ others connected through the Components SDK.
You generate a one-time payment code
Flexa creates a one-time code called a Flexcode. It works with standard barcode scanners. No new hardware needed.
You scan or tap at checkout
The cashier scans your Flexcode, or you tap your NFC-enabled hardware wallet on a Burner terminal (built by Arx Research). Takes about as long as a credit card. NFC works without a phone or internet.
Flexa guarantees your payment instantly
AMP collateral guarantees the merchant gets paid, even though your crypto transaction may take minutes to confirm on-chain.
Your crypto settles on-chain
The blockchain transaction confirms. The collateral that backed the guarantee is released.
— Trevor Filter, Flexa cofounder & CEO
Collateral backing means nothing to charge back. Per Flexa, the network has logged zero merchant losses since launch.[3]
Merchants integrate via hosted pages, QR scanning, a POS app, or full API[2]. None require new hardware. The Components SDK (August 2024) lets wallet developers integrate in under 24 hours.
How AMP Fits In
The guarantee layer that makes instant settlement possible.
Flexa had to solve one problem: how do you guarantee a merchant gets paid right now when the blockchain might take an hour to confirm the transaction?
The answer is collateral-backed instant settlement. AMP token holders stake their tokens on Flexa's Capacity platform[8], creating a pool of collateral that backs every payment in real time. The moment a customer pays, that collateral guarantees the merchant receives their funds — before the blockchain confirms anything. If a payment fails to settle on-chain, the collateral covers the merchant. Per Flexa's public statements, the collateral has never been liquidated.[3]
Traditional card networks settle in 2–3 business days and leave merchants exposed to chargebacks for months. Flexa settles at the time of purchase with a 100% payment guarantee that can never be reversed.
1. You pay → AMP collateral guarantees the merchant gets paid instantly
2. The blockchain confirms → collateral is released
3. Flexa takes a fee (under 1%) from the transaction
4. Fee revenue buys AMP tokens for stakers monthly
— Daniel McCabe, Flexa cofounder & former CEO
Token mechanics and staking details: About AMP and How to Stake.
Building a New Payment Rail
Why this has taken 8 years, and why that's normal.
Visa took decades to become Visa. Flexa has been at it since 2018[11]. The reason: you have to convince five groups to trust you at the same time.
Banks need to trust the settlement flow. Merchants get paid via ACH, wire, or direct deposit in USD, CAD, EUR, or digital assets on daily/weekly/monthly schedules. Flexa is building toward RTP and FedNow for instant fiat settlement.
The most complete proof of this trust being established: in September 2021, Bancoagrícola — El Salvador's largest bank, with 1 million+ customers and 1,000+ service points — integrated Flexa to enable Bitcoin payments across its entire customer base, in compliance with El Salvador's Bitcoin Law. That's national-scale banking adoption, not a pilot.
— Trevor Filter, Flexa cofounder & CEO, on the pace of payment network adoption
The compliance-first bet. Flexa handles all regulatory complexity so merchants don't have to. Merchants accepting Flexa payments don't hold a crypto wallet, don't worry about BSA/AML/KYC compliance, and don't need to understand blockchains.
From their perspective, Flexa looks like any other payment processor. Plug it into the existing POS system, get paid in dollars. The fact that the customer paid with Dogecoin is Flexa's problem, not theirs.
The team has raised $15.4 million — Pantera Capital, Gemini Frontier Fund, Jump Crypto, and others[15] — taking on a problem that usually costs billions and a decade of runway.
In March 2026, Flexa shut down its SPEDN wallet after 7 years, going all-in on infrastructure. Other apps handle the consumer experience; Flexa provides the rails. The Zashi, Coinbase, and WalletConnect integrations proved the model.
FinCEN MSB #31000252953664 · NMLS #1840599 · 36 states licensed + 7 pending + 7 exempt · El Salvador (2021) · Canada (live) · Europe / SEPA — 37 countries (2026)[6,7]
Where They Are Today
The current state of the Flexa network: merchants, wallets, and products.
Leadership. As of June 2026, Flexa is led by cofounder and CEO Trevor Filter, with President and Chief Legal Officer Upneet Teji running day-to-day operations, policy, partnerships, and regulated-product expansion. Cofounder Daniel McCabe — Flexa's longest-tenured CEO, who built its compliance and licensing foundation — transitioned from the role in June 2026 (advising through July 15) to focus on broader ecosystem, policy, and regulatory work.
Flexa is live at over 40,000 US and Canadian retail locations, with confirmed merchants including Chipotle, Dunkin', GameStop, Nordstrom, Ulta Beauty, Sheetz (750+ stores), Bealls (660+ stores), Barnes & Noble, Regal Cinemas, Baskin-Robbins, and more. See the full list on the Merchant Directory or explore the Store Map.
On the wallet side, Flexa supports checkout from 500+ wallet apps through its Components SDK, with native integrations in Coinbase (Base App), Zashi, Reown/WalletConnect, Farcaster, and World App.
— Jesse Pollak, Head of Base (Coinbase)
Flexa offers multiple acceptance channels depending on the merchant's setup and customer context:
Payment QR Codes
Customer scans a Flexcode at checkout. Works with existing barcode scanners — no new hardware.
Tap to Pay (NFC)
Customer taps an NFC hardware wallet (Burner by Arx Research) on a terminal. No phone or internet needed. Live since Feb 2025.
Payment Pages
Hosted checkout pages for online and e-commerce merchants. Optimized for conversion.
Mini App Payments
Embedded checkout inside social wallet mini-apps: Coinbase Base App, Farcaster, World App. Launched July 2025.
Components SDK
Drop-in SDK for iOS, Android, and React Native. Any wallet can add Flexa payments with a few lines of code.
Flexa API
Full API integration for custom payment flows. Bespoke implementations for enterprise merchants.
Payment Clips
Universal payments interface with real-time customer communications, dynamic discounts, and tipping.
Flexa Terminal
Point-of-sale app for iPhone and iPad. Standalone POS for merchants without existing Flexa gateway integration.
Flexa Capacity (Anvil)
Staking platform (v3). 20+ liquidity pools, 12–24 hour unlock windows, risk-aligned rewards.
Base Pay
USDC on Coinbase Base L2 as default payment method. Lowest fees, fastest settlement.
99+ Digital Assets
Across 13 blockchain networks: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Lightning, Cardano, Avalanche, Dogecoin, Base, Polygon, Zcash, and more.
Merchants pay 1% per transaction, all-in.[16] No hidden interchange tiers, no monthly minimums. Settlement via ACH, wire, or digital assets on daily, weekly, or monthly schedules. 99.999% uptime guarantee.[16]
Europe is now live — international scale is underway. In June 2026 Flexa extended its regulated money-movement platform across the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), bringing the same infrastructure trusted in the US, Canada, and El Salvador to 37 additional countries and territories, with EUR settlement directly through SEPA. European operations are anchored by Flexa Polska in Warsaw, formed in anticipation of the EU MiCA framework. The expansion reaches beyond merchant acceptance into payouts, remittances, cross-border transfers, and on/off-ramps between digital assets and local currency. The World App integration — World App has 40M+ users with heavy LATAM penetration[25] — signals a parallel LATAM push, and Flexa's multi-jurisdictional settlement patent (US-12,481,984[9]) adapts compliance rules per jurisdiction automatically.
The Journey So Far
Key milestones from founding to today.
Flexa Founded
Daniel McCabe, Tyler Spalding, Trevor Filter, and Zachary Kilgore incorporate Flexa in New York City with the goal of making cryptocurrency spendable everywhere.
ConsenSys Launch
Flexa launches with ConsenSys backing. Publishes its whitepaper describing a collateral-backed payment protocol. The FXC token goes live as the initial collateral mechanism.
AMP Token Launches
AMP launches on Ethereum (contract deployed August 11, 2020), replacing FXC with a non-custodial partition-based collateral system. ConsenSys Diligence and Trail of Bits audits completed with no critical findings.
Bancoagrícola × Flexa: El Salvador
El Salvador's largest bank — 1 million+ customers, 1,000+ service points — integrates Flexa to enable bitcoin payments for loans, credit cards, and merchant goods. Launches in compliance with El Salvador's Bitcoin Law (effective September 7, 2021). Flexa's first national-scale banking partnership.
Chipotle Partnership
Chipotle becomes one of the first major restaurant chains to accept digital currency payments at all 3,000+ US locations through Flexa.
Components SDK Launches
Flexa ships its Components SDK for iOS, Android, and React Native. Any wallet can add Flexa payments with a few lines of code.
Sheetz Goes Live
Sheetz activates Flexa payments at 750+ convenience stores across the eastern US, one of the largest single-merchant crypto payment rollouts.
Wallet Integrations Expand
Zashi (Zcash wallet) and Reown/WalletConnect integrate Flexa, opening the network to hundreds of wallet apps.
Tap to Pay (NFC) with Burner
Flexa becomes the first digital currency platform to support NFC hardware wallet payments at retail. Tap a Burner wallet (Arx Research) on a Flexa-enabled terminal. No mobile phone or internet needed. Demoed at ETHDenver 2025.
Capacity v3 (Anvil) Launches
Flexa migrates its staking infrastructure to the Anvil protocol with 20+ liquidity pools, predictable 12–24 hour unlock windows, and risk-aligned rewards. Announced February 26, 2025; the v2 migration completes mid-2025.
Mini App Payments
Flexa launches embedded payments inside social wallet mini-apps on Coinbase Base App, Farcaster, and World App. Launch merchants include Chipotle, Regal, and Sheetz.
Base Pay + Bealls Partnership
USDC on Coinbase's Base L2 becomes the default payment method. Bealls Inc. activates Flexa at 660+ stores across 22 US states.
SPEDN Deprecated
Flexa shuts down its SPEDN consumer wallet after 7 years, going all-in on infrastructure. Other apps handle the consumer experience; Flexa provides the rails.
Leadership Transition
Cofounder Daniel McCabe transitions from CEO (advising through July 15). Cofounder Trevor Filter is named CEO and chief legal officer Upneet Teji is elevated to President. Board-approved; the company reframes its next chapter around regulated crypto-fiat money movement.
Europe Launch (SEPA)
Flexa extends its regulated money-movement platform across the Single Euro Payments Area — 37 additional countries and territories — with EUR settlement directly through SEPA. Scope spans merchant acceptance, payouts, remittances, cross-border transfers, and on/off-ramps between digital assets and local currency. European operations are anchored by Flexa Polska (Warsaw), formed in anticipation of the EU MiCA framework.
The IP Behind the Network
Flexa holds 27 US patents covering the core mechanics of blockchain-based payments.
Flexa has built one of the most comprehensive patent portfolios in digital asset payments: 27 US patents granted to date[9], covering payment codes, collateral management, and cross-jurisdictional settlement.
Each Flexcode encodes a merchant identifier, transaction amount, and cryptographic signature in a standard barcode that works with existing scanners. This is why merchants don't need new hardware.
The pre-authorization hold locks the hold amount plus an over-collateralization equal to the asset's estimated price fluctuation over the hold window — the patent's worked examples estimate fluctuation up to ±100–300% for volatile assets ($2 locked to back a $1 hold; $800 to back a $200 hold), with the excess unlocked afterward. This is the patent that directly underpins AMP's collateral math and the reason stakers can guarantee payments against volatile assets.
The core AMP use case. Staked digital assets guarantee merchant payments before on-chain settlement confirms. This is how Flexa offers instant authorization with zero chargebacks.
Multiple payment methods under one framework: Base Pay (USDC default), Bill Split, Subscription mode, Show to Pay (QR), and NFC Tap to Pay via Burner wallets.
Merchant-initiated payments that don't require the customer to scan anything. Walk up to a vending machine; the payment happens based on proximity and pre-authorized wallet settings.
Crypto subscriptions. Recurring payments with digital assets don't natively exist on blockchains. This patent covers the infrastructure that lets merchants charge monthly without the customer initiating each payment.
Settlement, compliance checks, and fee structures adapt automatically based on merchant and customer jurisdiction. International expansion without rebuilding the protocol per country.
Cryptographic Merkle tree proofs calculate and distribute staking rewards in batches rather than per-transaction. Keeps gas costs low and scales to millions of stakers.
Sources
Primary sources used in this article.
- [1]Flexa Whitepaper — May 2019 — original protocol design and problem statement
- [2]Flexa Developer Documentation — Commerce Intent API, Components SDK, integration guides
- [3]Flexa Newsroom — Official merchant partnership and product launch announcements
- [4]ConsenSys Diligence Audit — June 2020 — AMP smart contract security audit
- [5]Trail of Bits Audit — July–August 2020 — independent AMP contract audit
- [6]FinCEN MSB Registration — Registration #31000252953664 — Flexa Network Inc.
- [7]NMLS Consumer Access — NMLS #1840599 — money transmitter license status by state
- [8]Flexa Capacity (Staking) — Live staking interface — pool data, APY, collateral levels
- [9]Flexa Network Inc. Patents — Assignee: Flexa Inc. (formerly Flexa Network Inc.) — 27 US patents granted covering payment codes, collateral, settlement, plus EP 4049216 in Europe
- [10]McCabe — Thinking Crypto Podcast — GDP social cost quote, AMP essentiality, merchant guarantee, financial inclusion
- [11]McCabe — ETH Denver Interview — 2035 vision, payment rail timeline, enterprise adoption
- [12]Filter — Crypto Town Hall — 300ms authorization, sales complexity (13 teams), ten-steps-forward quote
- [13]Nilson Report — Merchant Processing Fees in the United States 2024 — US card swipe fees totaled $187.2 billion in 2024, up from $172B in 2023 — credit cards $148.5B, debit and other $38.7B.
- [14]AFP Payments Fraud Survey — 80% of organizations targeted by payments fraud
- [15]Crunchbase — Flexa — $15.4M raised — Pantera Capital, Gemini Frontier Fund, Jump Crypto, others
- [16]Flexa Payments — Pricing & SLA — 1% per payment, all-in. No hidden fees. 99.999% uptime guarantee. Settlement on daily, weekly, or monthly schedules.
- [17]NYDFS Weekly Bulletin — August 15, 2025 — Application received from Flexa, Inc. for a license to engage in business as a transmitter of money (New York MTL).
- [18]White House — GENIUS Act Signing — President Trump signs the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act into law, July 18, 2025. Establishes federal regulatory framework for payment stablecoins.
- [19]Arx Research (Burner) — NFC hardware wallet partner for Flexa Tap to Pay — Cameron Robertson, CEO
- [20]BusinessWire — Flexa Releases — Third-party distribution of Bealls, Tap to Pay, and Nexus announcements
- [21]LexisNexis True Cost of Fraud — Every $1 of fraud costs merchants $3 in chargebacks, fees, and remediation
- [22]Chargebacks911 — Chargebacks cost merchants roughly 2× the original transaction value
- [23]European Commission — EFSIR 2022 — European Financial Stability and Integration Review, Chapter 3: Decentralised Finance (p. 49 — Flexa cited as DeFi payments example)
- [24]Harvard Business School — MCX and CurrentC — Case study: how a $1T merchant consortium failed to bypass card networks (2011–2016)
- [25]World — World in 2025 — World App reached nearly 40 million users in 2025, becoming the most-used self-custody digital wallet globally by monthly active users in September 2025.