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Patrick's summary of neo-bank named Rayn (ex akt.io) |
This short page aims at describing what services the Rayn (previously named akt.io) neo-bank provides.
Feel free to use my referral link to install and register on Rayn, or scan the QR code below.
You can also have a look at the latest news on Rayn here.
- toc {:toc}
Rayn has been founded a few years ago by a group of experts in finance, automated tradings and compliance. Especially the co-founders
- Gael Itier - CEO
- Jean-Yves Gillou - Managing Director Europe
- Julien Halimi - Chief Product Officer
It aims at revolutionizing the banking system, focusing more on earnings than on spendings. For that it uses heavily the world or crypto, not only by offering some crypto trading capabilities, but also and mostly by leveraging the new technologies behind crypto (blockchain, protocols, AI - Artificial Intelligence, ...). It brings security, compliance, performance and ease of use to the user.
Rayn is partnering with ModulR Finance for its banking offer (IBAN, Debit cards). It gets its standard electronic banking license from this partership, similarly to what Revolut does.
Rayn is a registered finance company in Ireland, Italy and France (PSAN, under the name AUTOMATA FRANCE SAS).
Rayn is also prepared and applying for the upcoming european MiCA license as well as a license coming up in the Emirates (VARA)
Rayn offers pretty standard neo-bank services:
- Very easy setup, everything is done via their app you can download. You'll get a direct app store (IOS / Android) once you click on my referral link and fill in your phone number 😉.
- You will be asked to fill a standard KYC (Know Your Customer), for compliance reasons. This is a good thing.
- Once installed and registered, you immediately have access to a personal IBAN. This allows you to transfer money to and from your new account. You can also deposit using your credit card.
- You can then select your membership, register as Ambassador, and start earning.
Rayn proposes different cards depending on your membership. They're all standard Visa debit card.
The cards allow you to pay with your EURO FIAT, but also with your crypto assets. This is done by enabling crypto payment in the app before paying. The setting is active for 15min. The merchant only sees Euros, so it works everywhere. What happens in the background is that a short-lived credit line is opened and gets reimbursed in Crypto directly. The side effect is that there is no conversion from Crypto to FIAT. In France, that should mean these transaction are not subject to the flat tax (30% of the benefits on cryptos)
The cards' limits depend on the membership. You can find the cards limit as well as other bank services info in the membership page.
As of today, November 6th, 2023, here are the main cards info:
| FREEDOM | WORLD | ELITE | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Biodegradable PVC VISA Card, 9.90€ Delivery fee per card | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| METAL VISA Card, 9.90€ Delivery fee per card | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| GOLD & DIAMOND VISA Card, Free delivery | ✔️ | ||
| Pay with crypto, Max limit for one payment | 100€ | 2000€ | 5000€ |
| Pay with crypto, Wallet amount percentage limit | 80% | 80% | 80% |
| Pay with crypto, Min fee per transaction | 1€ | 1€ | 1€ |
| EUR Payment | Free | Free | Free |
| Non-EUR Payment | 2.5% | 1.8% | Free |
| ATM, Free withdrawal amount | 200€ | 600€ | 2000€ |
| ATM, Free withdrawal limit | 5 | 5 | Unlimited |
| ATM, Above the free limit | 2.5% | 2.5% | 2.5% |
| SEPA Transfer | 0.5€ | Free | Free |
We can actually call the Rayn support! This is becoming pretty rare nowadays. And they are pretty reactive! There are numbers in Ireland, Italy and France:
- France: +33 4 1333 3444
- Ireland: +353 1 574 7382
- Italy: +39 06 4525 6900
Alternatively, you can use their email address: [email protected]
Vault are basically saving accounts. They aim to securely earn interests. Rayn offers various types of vaults, let's describe them.
Flex vaults allow to earn interest daily on unblocked money. Much like a Livret A in France, you deposit some money on the vault and you get interests out of this money every single day after that. The big differences with the french Livret A are:
- no deposit limit
- not tax-free: you earn PAR (a crypto stable coin equal to the Euro). If you convert these PAR into Euro, you have to declare the benefit and have a flat tax on it (in France)
- interests are paid daily!
- paid interest count for the next day interests: compound interest!
- you may open as many vaults as you wish (one for cars, one for holidays, one for day to day, ..)
Deposits can currently be made in Euro, or in USDT (a crypto stable coin aiming to be equal to USD).
Note that it may take 24 hours for your interests to take effect. So if you deposit a bit late in the day (say, after 4pm), it's possible you'll need to way 2 days to start seeing your first interests drop in.
The interest rate has been very stable for at least one year now. We currently get
- 5% APY
- 6.5% APY for Ambassador (1000 AKTIO coins staked)
On December 18th, 2023 Rayn launched the Term Vault:
- deposited money is locked for 1 year
- 7% APR
- 10% for Amabassadors until March 18th, 2024. Will be 9% after.
- interests paid daily!
According to the information in-app, the vault allocation is 60% on Mimo staking and 40% on mining.
Begining of 2023, Rayn launched the Blockchain vault (initially called mining vault). They initially had a pool of 10M USD (or Euros?) allocated to this and added twice 2M since then
In a nutshell
- they buy machines - they got very good prices during the bear market (most cryptos going down..)
- they install them in multiple locations (SRE!)
- they buy the electricity upfront at a good price. They also mentioned they use as much grren electricity as possible (solar, geothermal, ..)
- These machine are used to mine BitCoins and get rewards, in BitCoins
- These rewards are instantly converted into PAR (Euro stable coin) and distributed to users. Rayn keeps a portion of it for themselves.
Note:
- deposited money is locked for 2 years
- The interest rate is variable. During an AMA, they mentioned that if BTC (BitCoin) drops below 10K (which would be very very surprising), we'd still get about 10% reward for Ambassadors. The interest can also raise to more than we have today with the price of BTC raising up. We had some spikes above 20%.
- interests paid daily!
- The pool is limited. At one point, it may not be possible to deposit in mining anymore, or not at the same conditions (more expensive machines, electricity, mining costs, rewards, ..)
Currently, Mining vaults have been providing stable 12% to non-ambassadors, and almost 17% to ambassadors. Interests changes I captured:
| Date | new rate (amabassador) |
|---|---|
| November, 11th 2023 | 17.8% |
| December, 8th 2023 | 18.3% |
| February, 20th 2024 | 18.6% |
Rayn has a great referral program:
- Both referree and referrer get some AKTIO (random between 10 and 200) during a succesful referral (at least 50 euros deposited on something)
- A referrer gets 5% of the fees genererated by his/her affiliates (10% with the Ambassador status 🎉). These get added to a dedicated Flex vault automatically (so you earn interests on top!)
The referree need to register, order a card, and make a first payment to activate the welcome and referral bonuses.
Rayn offers some basic trading capabilities (buy/sell) on 100+ crypto assets. They don't aim at being better than other big players in that area. Further enhancement ae in the pipe (amongst many other priorities), like limit orders, DCA.
The trading fees depend on your status: Freedom/World/Elite. Ambassadors get a discount on top. The fees are clearly documented on the membership page. As of November 11th, 2023 here are the numbers:
| Standard trading fees | Ambassador trading fees | |
|---|---|---|
| Freedom | 0.95% | 0.665% |
| World | 0.75% | 0.525% |
| Elite | 0.2% | 0.2% |
Rayn also has its own crypo token: AKTIO. This token is meant to have some usability in the app. Today, it's mainly about the ambassador sttaus and reduced costs/fees.
It is interesting to not that the max quantity of AKTIO is limited to 100M by the tokenomics, which is relatively low. The idea is that a high number of Rayn, incentivized to buy AKTIO (as a utility token), would start quickly making the token rare, which should increase the price. So somehow, the AKTIO price is linked to Rayn's success to attract customers.
Everything you want to know about the AKTIO coin should be available in the whitepaper
Rayn has a staking program for AKTIO: we can lock some AKTIO for 1 year and get some interest after that period, in AKTIO, along with your locked amount. There is no limit to staking. The interest yield depends on your membership:
| Freedom | World | Elite |
|---|---|---|
| 3% | 10% | 15% |
Staking 1000 AKTIO allows you to reach the ambassador status, which mainly lowers fees or increases revenues. See the ambassador page for details.
The initial idea of Rayn actually started around a bot that would run automatic trades for the user, based on AI and trend analysis. Meet the "Bot", currently called Automated Portfolio in the application.
The bot is based on 3 "layers":
- a selection of crypto assets from Rayn experts - and those are very good! This selectio is reviewed and amended periodically, depending on the overall market evolution.
- an automated allocation of funds on those assets. That's where the whole magic happens.
- a risk profile management. Depending on your risk appetite - 5 risk levels from conservative to aggressive - the allocation will try to preserve from 90% to 70% of your capital. This is currently done by buying USDT. They are thinking of using a Flex vault in order to still earn some interests on those.
Currently, Rayn requires a minimum of 100 euros to invest in the bot.
Things to note on the bot:
- there is no performance garantee, and you may lose money for some time
- It is quite aggressive by default, which means it can lose quite a bit (eg 45%).
- It does not do intra-day alocations, but rather aims at mid/long term performance.
- It works best on bull runs (positive market), and basically limits loss on bear market.
My personal experience with the bot, as of November, 12th 2023:
- I invested from day one, when there was only a selection of crypto from the team. Since that was not a dynamic alocation and there was no risk profile selection at the time, I actually lost quite a bit.
- Once the automated allocation was put in place, I started losing much less. But the market was bad overall, so no nice perfomance yet.
- The risk management came third and helped as well.
- When the big bull run (positive market) started, about 7 months after my first investment in the bot, I was at around -30%. I actually disabled the risk profile, to get the most aggressive behavior of the bot. This got me back to my initial investment in 2 weeks.
- Since changing risk profile, or even enabling/disabling it, is super easy, I will not hesitate to switch it in the future, depending on market conditions. As an alternative, I am also thinking of taking a portion of the funds out of the bot in Bear conditions, and put them manually on a vault in the meanwhile.
Rayn has 3 types of membership, described on the dedicated page. They are
- Freedom
- World
- Elite
On top of that, you may get additional benefit by staking 1000 AKTIO and become an Ambassador.
Benefits (as of November 12th, 2023):
| Non-Ambassador | Ambassador | Interests payout | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flex Vault Interest rate (APY) | 5% | 6.5% | Daily |
| Term Vault Interest rate (APR) | 7% | 10% until march 2024, 9% after | Daily |
| Cloud Mining Vault Interest rate (APR) | 12% | 18.6% as of February 2024 (variable) | Daily |
| Affiliate revenues | 5% | 10% | Daily |
| Crypto trading fees | -30% | ||
| World membership | 150€ | 105€ |
If you want to be World and Ambassador
- first stake your first 1000 AKTIO. Those will get 5% interest
- then get the cheaper World membership
- then stake more AKTIO if you want: you'll get the World interests at 15%