VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 29, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Glance Technologies Inc. (CSE:GET) (OTCQB:GLNNF) (FKT:GJT) (“Glance”, the “Company”, “we”, “our”, or “us”) today provided the following update from Chief Executive Officer Desmond Griffin.
Dear Glance shareholders:
We are building the future at Glance. Our technology is right at the forefront as people change the way they pay for goods and services.
I am writing to reassure you about Glance’s great prospects, given the misinformation (which we have repeatedly corrected) and negativity you might have read from a former officer who was terminated in February and who is now a dissident shareholder.
A big part of our go forward plan includes the new version of the Glance merchant app. We are devoting significant resources to this development and expect it to launch in the second half of fiscal 2018. The new version of the Glance merchant app is important as it enables merchants to quickly download it directly to their own mobile devices.
This should allow us to accelerate the sales process, moving from a direct sales model to predominantly digital sales through online and tele-marketing, targeting markets in a number of geographies with minimal overhead. We plan to expand this technology into online purchases and e-commerce by leveraging our anti-fraud technology for online merchants suffering high fraud rates.
Blockchain and cryptocurrency
We are working diligently on our cryptocurrency technology and are assembling what we believe is a strong team on this front. This blockchain-based rewards platform will allow Glance merchants to reward and provide deals and incentives to customers based on smart contracts.
To accelerate the progress of this app and our core technology, we have strengthened our team with the addition of employees with valuable experience gained at other leading technology companies.
Our plan is to provide a loyalty mechanism that allows Glance users to spend accumulated rewards within a larger marketplace. We also anticipate that by rewarding Glance users with our token, we will enable everyday individuals to get involved with cryptocurrency and hopefully encourage widespread adoption.
We believe blockchain and cryptocurrencies are fundamentally transformative technologies, providing significant opportunities for the early pioneers in this space. According to Coinschedule.com, over $3.7 billion USD was invested in cryptocurrency initial coin offerings in 2017. That large influx of capital investment should accelerate the advance of fundamental blockchain platform technology as well as applications and more widespread adoption of the technology in the next few years.
Our second quarter so far
The second quarter of 2018 has been our most successful quarter to date in terms of customer expansion and adding new merchants. We have signed more than 140 locations, and added our largest restaurant chain to-date, including our first significant U.S.-based restaurant chain. In May, we also hosted a very successful blockchain conference in Vancouver, building recognition for Glance’s brand and capabilities.
Over time, we expect that increasing usage of our app, combined with new features, will deliver a growing stream of monthly revenue from merchants through a tiered Software-as-a-Service subscription model. This will be in addition to our ability to generate new revenue from transactions, advertising, promotions, and consumer fees for premium features.
With a disruptive new technology like ours, it takes time to establish critical mass. However, once critical mass is achieved, it can become viral very rapidly. We are working towards that tipping point, having carefully developed and proved the technology locally (in Vancouver), just as I did at PayByPhone, and are now beginning to expand internationally.
Licensing
Euro Asia Pay Holdings Inc. (“Euro Asia Pay”) was the first company to seek a licensing agreement with Glance when they approached us in the spring of 2017. We announced our letter of intent with Euro Asia Pay in April 2017 and the definitive agreement in October 2017.
Euro Asia Pay was keenly interested in us because it was aware of PayByPhone’s history of success with mobile payments. Our team, with myself in the lead, developed a solid relationship with Euro Asia Pay’s team and closed the licensing transaction.
This licensing transaction was based on similar models that I used in earlier ventures that had resulted in operational success. All of our licensing transactions are based on the innovations and technology platform we have built, and are continuing to build. We are continuing to look for more opportunities to leverage our technology.
We are also exploring licensing opportunities for the BlockImpact cryptocurrency and blockchain platform that we acquired last year to accelerate our blockchain development. These licensing opportunities would go beyond our rewards token initiative.
A model of success for Glance
Glance is following the successful business model of Vancouver-based PayByPhone (formerly Verrus Mobile Technologies), an internationally successful mobile payment company that I co-founded and was CEO of from inception until it was acquired.
During this period, the PayByPhone team took the technology from a concept to a platform processing tens of millions of mobile payments annually for millions of consumers around the world, making it one of the leading mobile payment apps in the market at the time.
As with PayByPhone, we are proving our technology locally, in Vancouver, and then setting the stage for new geographical markets. That stage-setting is already underway, with new restaurants signing up in California and with our new offices in the U.K. and Australia.
Our financial resources
At the end of our most recent fiscal quarter we had over $13 million of cash, and no debt. We have a solid runway because we have worked hard to become more efficient in our spending since the termination of the dissident shareholder’s consulting agreement in February.
It is worth noting that I have raised more than $40 million throughout my tenure at PayByPhone and at Glance. My experience at Glance has been that investors generally wish to deal with the CEO and my track record with PayByPhone has been the foundation for Glance’s credibility. Should Glance require more capital in the future, as CEO I will continue to oversee our fund raising efforts and am confident that investors will be interested in Glance’s future.
Our key competitive advantages
A key competitive advantage for Glance from the outset has been our sophisticated anti-fraud technology. At a similar stage, even much larger companies have experienced significantly higher rates of fraud, such as an estimated 6% fraud rate in the early months of Apple Pay. We have had zero instances of fraud dating back well over a year, and that’s a major consideration for merchants. This stellar track record bodes well for our future.
At the outset, Glance targeted full-serve restaurants because we saw an obvious benefit to customers paying for the meals more quickly and allowing the restaurant to seat their next client while offering automatic rewards and incentives to drive repeat usage. We continue to enter new industry verticals such as salons, automotive and parking tickets, despite the distraction of the unnecessary proxy contest.
Glance has embarked on a strong and fruitful path
By establishing the usability of our technology, expanding our target market to a broader array of merchants, improving capacity for monetization with more products, raising significant capital, eliminating fraud and strengthening our product offering, we feel Glance has embarked on a strong and fruitful path.
We firmly believe that mobile devices are the future of payments and consumer engagement, and we believe blockchain is a fundamentally transformative technology. According to iResearch, mobile payments are the dominant form of payment in China, where annual payments already amount to trillions of U.S. dollars on an annual basis.
We believe Glance is well positioned to take advantage of these technological trends as we continue to build our technology and expand our network of merchants and consumers. Every year mobile phones advance significantly, accelerating the transition to mobile payments and giving us even more tools for innovation.
We value all our merchants, users, and shareholders, and we thank you for your support. We are excited about the future and we have a fantastic team to execute. We hope you protect your investment by voting the BLUE proxy for Glance’s nominees.
Sincerely,
“Desmond Griffin”
Desmond Griffin
Chief Executive Officer
Glance Technologies Inc.
Vote the BLUE Proxy for Glance’s Nominees
Glance urges shareholders to read its proxy fight materials filed on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) and on Glance’s website at https://glance.tech/agm18/ and then vote only the BLUE proxy FOR Glance’s five nominees.
The choice is clear. Protect your investment.
Vote only the BLUE form of proxy well in advance of the proxy voting deadline on June 8, 2018 at 2:00 p.m. (Pacific time).
Shareholders with questions about voting their Shares should contact DF King at 1-855-487-9247 (toll free) or by email at inquiries@dfking.com. The meeting will be held at 1200 Waterfront Centre, 200 Burrard Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, on June 12, 2018, at 2:00 p.m. (Pacific Time).
About Glance Technologies Inc.
Glance Technologies owns and operates Glance Pay, a streamlined payment system that revolutionizes how smartphone users choose where to shop, order goods and services, make payments, access digital receipts, redeem digital deals, earn great rewards and interact with merchants. Glance offers targeted in-app marketing, geo targeted digital coupons, customer feedback, in-merchant messaging and custom rewards programs. The Glance Pay mobile payment system consists of proprietary technology, which includes user apps available for free downloads in IOS (Apple) and Android formats, merchant manager apps, a large scale technology hosting environment with sophisticated anti-fraud technology and lightning fast payment processing. Glance has also recently purchased a blockchain solution and is working on a rewards-based cryptocurrency.
For more information about Glance, please go to www.glance.tech.
For more information, contact:
Investor Relations Paola Ashton
1-866-258-1249 VP Business Development
investors@glancepay.com 604-839-0337
Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking information or forward-looking statements (collectively “forward-looking information”) within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information is typically identified by words such as: “may”, “believe”, “thinks”, “expect”, “exploring”, “expand”, “could”, “anticipate”, “intend”, “estimate”, “plan”, “pursue”, “potentially”, “projected”, “should”, “will” and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. These forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties, relate to, among other things, Glance’s future prospects, the development of a new version of the Glance merchant app, the acceleration of the sales process from a direct sales model to predominantly digital sales, the expansion of the Glance Pay technology into online purchases and e-commerce, the development of a block-chain based rewards platform, the ability to enable everyday individuals to get involved with cryptocurrency and encourage widespread adoption of the Glance cryptocurrency token, the belief that blockchain and cryptocurrency are fundamentally transformative technologies, the expectation that increasing usage of the Glance Pay app will deliver a growing stream of monthly revenue from merchants through a tiered Software as a Service subscription model, the ability for disruptive new technologies to become viral rapidly, the potential for new licensing opportunities for Glance’s technology, including the BlockImpact cryptocurrency and blockchain platform, the ability of Glance to obtain additional investment, that Desmond Griffin will oversee Glance’s fundraising efforts as CEO, the belief that Glance has the necessary financial resources to execute Glance’s strategy, the belief that Glance’s sophisticated anti-fraud technology is a competitive advantage, the entrance into new industry verticals such as salons, automotive and parking tickets, and the belief that mobile devices are the future of payments and consumer engagement. Although Glance considers these forward-looking statements to be reasonable based on information currently available to it, they may prove to be incorrect, and the forward-looking statements in this release are subject to numerous risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause future results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. Such risk factors include, among other things, that Glance will not be able to develop its new technologies, on schedule or at all, that blockchain and cryptocurrency will not be the fundamentally transformative technologies that Glance believes, that usage of the new merchant app will not increase at the rate that Glance believes, or at all, that Glance will not be able to find new licensing opportunities for its technologies, that Glance will not have the necessary financial resources to execute on its strategy, that Glance will not be able to obtain new capital, that Glance will not be able to integrate Glance’s proprietary technology with cryptocurrency and blockchain support, and that Glance will not be able to enter into new industry verticals such as salons, automotive and parking tickets, or at all. Forward-looking information and forward-looking statements are in addition based on various estimates, forecasts and projects as well as expectations, beliefs and assumptions, including, without limitation, that Glance has great prospects, that Glance will be able to leverage its anti-fraud technology to expend into online purchases and e-commerce, that Glance will be successful in developing a rewards-based cryptocurrency, that cryptocurrency and blockchain are fundamentally transformative technologies, that the large influx of capital investment in cryptocurrency ICOs will accelerate the advance of fundamental blockchain platform technology as well as applications and widespread adoption, that disruptive new technologies can become viral rapidly, that Glance’s financial resources are adequate for executing Glance’s strategy, that Desmond Griffin’s track record at PayByPhone is a foundation for Glance’s credibility, that Glance’s anti-fraud technology is a competitive advantage, and that mobile devices are the future of payments and consumer engagement. For additional information with respect to these and other factors and assumptions underlying the forward looking statements in this press release, see the section entitled “Risk Factors” in the most recent Prospectus of Glance, which may be accessed through Glance’s profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Glance cautions investors that any forward-looking information provided by Glance is not a guarantee of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Undue reliance should not be placed on such forward-looking information, as there can be no assurance that the plans, intentions or expectations upon which they are based will occur.