LUWA - Send lumens to any phone number!

emretinaztepe

Hello Everyone,

We are about to release LUWA, an online XLM wallet which works with verified phone numbers and makes it possible to send lumens to any phone number internationally.

Here is how it works:
- You enter an international phone number into the address field (e.g: +12095293626),
- System checks if this phone number is already a member?
- If yes, LUWA automatically redirects the payment to registered Stellar Account Id,
- Otherwise, it creates a new Stellar account, funds it with the payment you send and notifies the owner of the phone number with an SMS containing instructions to claim their payment (nitty-gritty details are handled by LUWA for making it easy for claiming your lumens)

We will keep adding more features in the upcoming weeks. So, stay tuned!

Please let us know what you think about it before we release it in a few days.

Any feedback is appreciated.

emretinaztepe

Hello Everyone,

We are finally ready for release. You can start using LUWA here https://luwa.io/

Here is a brief description of what LUWA is:

LUWA is basically an online Stellar Wallet which is designed with simplicity and security in mind,
It works by verifying your phone number using Facebook Account kit and then maps your phone number to your Stellar account. So your federation address becomes something like 12095293626*luwa.io,
Supports 2-Factor Authentication out-of-box,
Makes it possible to send lumens to any phone number by creating a Stellar account and notifying the recipient with an SMS,
Provides you with QR codes for sharing your account easily,
Has full control over your Secret Key but it is also possible to use it without providing your secret key,
Your secret key is stored as encrypted (AES-256) on our servers and decrypted on client side (in your browser) only if you provide your password (cuz we don't know it).
It is totally free except a 0.2 XLM fee when sending lumens to a new phone number (only for the first time for compensating SMS notification fees),
Has a responsive and clean design to make it easy to use.

For more information please visit https://luwa.io/Faq

Please let us know what you think about it and spread the word if you like it!

Best Regards.

webexco

Hello emretinaztepe this is really a great idea. I will give a shot for sure to this service.

What will be next? Are you going to support mobile platforms?

Gitzman

This is awesome. Do we need to use your wallet to take advantage of this service or can I just send lumens to XXX-XXX-XXXX*luwa.io and it gets processed?

emretinaztepe

Gitzman Glad you like it and also thanks for the heads up (we forgot to mention this in FAQ).

Yes it is also possible to use this feature as-a-service.

Just send your lumens to send*luwa.io by attaching the phone number into text memo.
Please note that, phone number should start with country code and can contain only numbers as in 12095293626.

That's all! Processing of the payment takes a minute then the recipient is notified with an SMS.

Regards.

savebattgo

We have a voice bot banking system. It uses Ripple, Ethereum and other currencies and not yet Lumens, how easy is it to integrate your idea with our API

emretinaztepe

savebattgo it is as easy as sending lumens.

There are two options:
- You can send lumens to send*luwa.io with phone number attached to text memo and we handle the rest. Processing of payments takes a minute then we notify the recipient,
- We can provide you with an API as well. This should be further discussed since it requires development on our side.

Regards.

musashi

Hi Emre, this is awesome! I just tried it by sending some lumens to my friend. He received lumens in 1 minute. Everything was so simple.

emretinaztepe

musashi glad you liked it!

emretinaztepe

webexco we are planning to develop a mobile app with Xamarin depending on the number of users we have.

BlockMaster

Very cool. Having a mobile and desktop wallet would be really nice. I could see people using this.

emretinaztepe

BlockMaster Glad to see you like it! We would be more than happy to develop mobile and desktop versions of LUWA.

cryptobrant

What happens if the recipient never registers his phone? Does the sender get his XLM back?
Lumenette does this too with phone numbers but if the phone number isn’t in the database then the XLM payment stays pending and can be canceled any time (or is auto canceled after 10 days). When the recipient registers his phone, the sender is notified and next time he opens his Lumenette app the transfer is effective.

emretinaztepe

cryptobrant Currently we only refund the payment if user provided an invalid number. This was made intentionaly in order to prevent fraud. We are planning to add an option to let users choose how much time should be given to recipient before the payment is refunded. Of course this will be noted in the SMS we deliver.

ndreckshage

Very interesting! Congrats on your launch.

As cryptobrant mentioned, similar to my wallet from SBC (https://galactictalk.org/d/1159-lumenette-android-ios-stellar-lumens-wallet) which also lets you send Lumen to any phone number.

We solve in fundamentally different ways though. Can see value in both!

emretinaztepe

ndreckshage Congratulations! I really liked the logo and the design of Lumenette. It deserves a good amount of lumens awarded ?

Regarding the payments, any address capable of receiving a notification is a candidate recipient. This goes true for email, facebook, twitter and so on. We will probably add sending payments to these addresses as well. Once application is authorized by the user, that won't be any different from sending an SMS imo...

cryptobrant

emretinaztepe in my opinion a refund option is vital so I’m looking forward to it. I’m a big fan of the “send money like it’s an email or a text message” philosophy, but it’s still money and 99% of the population is still crypto uneducated so it’s important to be able to retrieve the money if it’s not claimed ?

emretinaztepe

cryptobrant We will definitely give it a priority in the next release which will be done in a month. Thanks for your feedback.