At the end of October, Cointelegraph spoke to Sandeep Goenka, a co-founder of Indian Bitcoin startup Zebpay, about his team’s plans after taking home top prize in the CoinAgenda conference’s startup competition.

“Zebpay wallet's mission is to be as easy to use as popular chat apps,” Goenka told us. “Its target use is for regular people who want to transact in Bitcoins with their friends, family and local businesses.”

The Zebpay wallet does this by essentially making a user’s phone number his or her bitcoin wallet address. It is designed so users can send bitcoins to their phone’s contacts and receive instant confirmations.

On Monday, the Zebpay team officially launched their mobile wallet for Android phones.

“Zebpay is the world’s first Bitcoin mobile wallet targeted at everyone, not just geeks,” Zebpay’s co-founders said in a release. “If you use popular instant messaging apps, then you already know how to use Zebpay.

“Once you download Zebpay, you can simply send and receive bitcoins to anyone from your contact book. Really, that’s all there is to it.”

The team said that an iOS version of the app was under development and would soon follow.

This launch also features a giveaway: Early users who download the mobile wallet will receive US$1 worth of bitcoins for free. And if they invite others to download the app, they can get up to another US$5 worth of bitcoins.

Zebpay’s Seed Round and Startup Contest Win

The CoinAgenda startup contest that Zebpay won in the fall included quality competition, including Blockchain recordkeeping service Factom and hardware security startup Rivetz.

“We were blown away by the quality of the companies who presented,” Michael Terpin, founder of CoinAgenda and co-founder of BitAngels, said at the time. “The VC panel was also quite impressed calling it one of the best selections of early-stage Bitcoin companies they’ve seen anywhere.”

In the weeks just before the CoinAgneda contest, the three-man Zebpay team raised US$125,000 in seed capital.


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