Clément Francomme, founder of Utocat, told CoinFox about his company, a young bitcoin startup based in Northern France.
Last week “the cryptocurrency bitcoin” made headlines in the news outlets of Northern France. La voix du Nord wrote that a Lille-based startup Utocat paid its rent to Euratechnologies in bitcoins. Euratechnologies, known as “Lille Silicon Valley”, is a 150,000 sq. m technology centre located in the biggest city of Northern France, inaugurated in 2009 and hosting around 140 businesses. Utocat is a bitcoin payment processor offering free solutions for local merchants willing to accept cryptocurrency payments. To learn more about the company, CoinFox contacted Clément Francomme, the founder of Utocat.
CoinFox: How did you come to bitcoin?
Clément: I've tried Bitcoin in 2013 during Cyprus crisis, and found it interesting to use: No middleman, no need for trust in the payment process, easy to use (for a geek/nerd), really fast. I was feeling “Wow, that's clearly the future and it's happening now!” I decided to quit my job as IT Manager to dedicate my time only to a bitcoin related activity.
CoinFox: Why did you decide to make a service for merchants?
Clément: I thought that there were too few 'real places' where we could use bitcoin and start developping a solution for Brick and Mortar merchants. I started Utocat in October 2014 following a high interest by a banking client.
CoinFox: What do you offer to your clients?
Clément: We have one application in production: Utocat Marchand Android. Two more apps are in closed beta : Utocat marchand iOS and Utocat Marchand Prestashop. We let our beta users test it on request. It's now easy to accept bitcoins for any shops that want to accept it without hassle.
CoinFox: Was it difficult to convince Euratechnologies to accept bitcoin payments?
Clément: We arrived in Euratechnologies in June 2015 and used this opportunity to develop our product and our brand. Then we helped our Incubator to accept bitcoin as a mean of payment. The only difficulty was coming from the fact that the chairman of Euratechnologies is a local politician and the IDs of politicians are really difficult to obtain. Now we can pay our rent with bitcoins and show that it is possible!
CoinFox: Do Euratechnologies actually accept bitcoins or do they somehow change bitcoin into fiat currency?
Clément: They use our system that converts bitcoins straight away in Euros. In fact, they know exactly how much because we ensure the amount in Euros will be exact.
CoinFox: If I get it right, you work totally for free, using your own money to develop the start-up? Do you work somewhere else?
Clément: Yes, we work for free with our own money on this project. We are consultants for banks and we create prototypes for them: that is how we have enough to invest. These missions are also helping us to design new solutions / products that will be useful for our clients and that we would like to sell up to a point.
Alexey Tereshchenko
