Introducing Overpay.com: Spend ZEC Anywhere (alpha)

General
1

Hey all - I’ve been building something that I wanted to share here first.

I’m calling it Overpay: https://overpay.com

I’m sure many of you have struggled (like me) to find vendors who accept Zcash without needing to jump through hoops and multiple apps, or forcing us back to credit cards.

The idea is simple: if a vendor doesn’t accept ZEC, Overpay will pay them to.

Tell us want you want to buy, approve a budget, and fund it with Zcash. Overpay then sources the vendor, completes the purchase, and verifies fulfillment.

“Wait, is this Silk Road 3.0?!?” Not exactly. Think less darknet marketplace, more moderated Craigslist for crypto.

The goal with Overpay is to help make ZEC usable as money: for buying custom merch for the next conference, securing new hardware for your team, prepaying for compute, topping up API credits, things like that (for now).

I’m building it for humans and AI agents, making Overpay the first crypto-native marketplace that welcomes bots.

We’re only in alpha, but we’re offering a $50 USD credit applied to your first purchase of $100 or more to the first 25 people who respond to this thread. Mention your username in your Overpay request for us to apply your credit.

Cryptocurrency is money, and it should be spendable. I think we can all agree that this is what Satoshi intended to create: peer to peer electronic cash, for buying real things.

I’d love your feedback!

Thanks -
Blake
Founder, overpay.com

overpay-alpha
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8 Likes
2

Cool! How does one end up on the list of vendors used for sourcing?

3

Currently we’re keeping it to a closed loop of vendors we trust, since all payments go directly to sellers. We’re working towards opening this to a much wider audience as we release more moderation features.

I’d love to loop new vendors in sooner then later though, ask any to shoot us an email and we’ll try to get them onboarded.

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Awesome. Per @emersonian 's usual.

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5

@emersonian Thanks for sharing this. I’ve had the same pain point for a while, and this approach (and the UI) really resonates with me.

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6

Great project.
What’s with the name though? Why would you bake bad publicity into the first encountered and most recurring element of a service? Maybe English isn’t your first language…

overpay (verb) To pay too much.

Nobody wants that. I get why the domain was available.

7

I like controversial names and I love generosity.

After years of trying to live completely crypto-natively, the easiest way I’ve found to convince a business to accept crypto is to offer to pay them more.

I expect our prices to actually be lower than everywhere else one day since crypto-native businesses don’t need banks and pricey intermediaries like credit card companies.

But the reality today is that accepting cryptocurrency is a bookkeeping nightmare.

Paying businesses a little extra onboards them forever into our circular economy, and fairly compensates for the extra time they’ll have to spend climbing our technology’s learning curve.

Our biggest challenge is not finding buyers, it’s convincing normal businesses to accept it. We’re an experiment in rewarding businesses when they accept cryptocurrency.

Crypto buyers are generous, take our money. That’s the message of Overpay.

2 Likes
8

I don’t think that’s a connotation generally associated with the verb overpaying.
Overpaying is - by definition - too much, regardless of paying extra or not. It means you got scammed, ripped off or regret paying that extra. It has nothing to do with generosity and everything with feeling sour.

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It’s a nice idea and catchy brand name you have, but it could be misunderstood by others since they might think using “Overpay” can make them pay more than using it to be convenient.

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Really like the idea! Been thinking about this for a while as well but I think it might quickly turn into a compliance nightmare.

I will keep following! And I do think we need this. Let me now if I can assist in any way.

11

I think the name is brilliant.

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12

Do you pay in fiat or do you get the vendor to accept ZEC?

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The core idea makes sense abstract away vendor friction and let someone act as a bridge so ZEC can be used where it normally isn’t accepted.

That said, a few practical questions come to mind:

  1. Custody risk: At what point do you take control of the ZEC, and how is that secured? Are you holding funds until fulfillment or converting immediately?

  2. Dispute model: If the vendor fails to deliver or delivers something different, who eats that loss? You? The user? Is there escrow logic or just operational trust?

  3. Compliance exposure: Since you’re effectively acting as a purchasing intermediary, how are you handling KYC thresholds, restricted goods, export controls, etc.? That’s where a lot of “crypto concierge” models get squeezed.

  4. Fee structure long-term: After the $50 alpha credit, what’s the sustainable margin? Is this a % spread, flat fee, or embedded FX markup?

The “spend ZEC anywhere” narrative is strong. Execution and risk controls are what will determine if it survives beyond alpha. Just my thoughts, happy to input if you are interested, Cheers

Curious how you’re thinking about scaling this without turning it into a centralized bottleneck.

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i think showing the vendors details could be useful for reputation, similar to ebay. unless, are you guaranteeing all purchases?

15

This is amazing @emersonian

I am really in need of a way to easily accept and process zcash transactions at the Zebra Lounge. Can you help us with a way to let people pay us in zec for in person as well as online purchases??

Well done for launching overpay. Sounds :clap: amazing and just what the space needs..

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How is the project going? We do not want this to fade out!

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@LimitlessPunk Same here, hoping to see the project keep progressing. The idea of spending ZEC more easily is exciting for the ecosystem.

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@ZecMec That would be great to see. Tools that make it easier for places like Zebra Lounge to accept ZEC could really help adoption.

19

Initiatives like Overpay are exciting because they explore practical ways to expand ZEC usability. Looking forward to seeing how the project evolves beyond the alpha stage.

20

This is super cool! Was actually trying to find a service like this the other day, because Amazon was giving me issues :roll_eyes: Will be placing an order in the next few days!