We'd expect there to be substantial online marketing in this day and age, but what offline marketing does CF expect to undertake, and what might that look like? Billboards/Digital Signage/Side of a Bus etc).

What locations/geographies does CF expect to have marketing presence in or is it predominantly online?

Our marketing strategy will implement online and offline tactics to support inbound (two-way conversation) and outbound (forced conversation). Predominately we will focus our marketing efforts online and through inbound campaigns to maximize the use of budget and obtain the best ROI. Our initial online marketing efforts will cross over North America and Europe with a more direct media buy focus with North American based crypto and fintech publications (although they have global traffic). We will ramp up our marketing globally and invest more marketing spending into offline tactics as we continue to grow.

Given the popularity of advertising on F1 for crypto projects, is there any ambition to get involved there or any other sports?

As we continue to grow Connect, our marketing strategy and marketing spend, we will be looking into all marketing opportunities to reach our target audience, including but not limited to the trend of crypto in sporting activities such as the F1, Superbowl, UEFA, etc. But, I will say that our main focus is on value and benefits.

Will we ever see some form of uncollateralized lending on the CNFI platform that will allow more funds to be borrowed with good payment history?

Never say never, but it's not on our roadmap at the moment. Uncollateralized lending opens up regulation and licensing requirements that would significantly change our business model.

We are actively building out additional products and services that offer additional lending options, for example using NFTs as collateral, but these will come later on after launch.

Are there any teaser videos or pics for the current card products? Would love to see any samples you might have!

Absolutely, you can check our medium updates (https://connectfinancial.medium.com), where we share and showcase platform UIUX developments, card packaging development, etc. Regarding teaser videos, we are currently reviewing and establishing these frameworks.

Will the cards integrate with mobile phone for quick pay - if so what phone platform?

The short answer is yes...
...the slightly longer answer is that integrating into Apple Pay / Google Pay requires additional work to be done with our card partners, so this will probably not be available at launch.

You've mentioned your credit card will be made available worldwide (except OFAC). Will that be a worldwide release from the start or will it be phased?

At start we will be releasing worldwide. The only phased part will be the velocity of onboarding/issuing cards as we ramp up services

For the roll out of the existing products, what time frame do you have for each of the phases from pre-launch, to launch itself, to post launch campaigns?

We are working with an appropriate marketing ramp-up to support our startup. Our foundational marketing components are active, and we will be lightly advancing these to encompass a few inbound and outbound campaigns approximately six-eight weeks before going to market.

Four weeks before launch, we will be expanding our marketing presence through media partnerships.

We have a much more comprehensive marketing plan to support our launch with an initial target spend within North America and Europe. Following the launch, we will be continuing to ramp up and expand our marketing on a global scale.

With the recent SEC lawsuit platforms such as Celsius have remouved their interest earning service and are working on releasing one that is fully compliant with the SEC regulations. Will CNFI have to go down the same route?

We will always have to adjust our product offerings to our users based on regulatory changes in their jurisdiction. So, tl:dr, unfortunately yes, we will have to make adjustments based on recent clarifications from the SEC.

What's the teams thoughts with regards to aiming to deliver a near perfect product vs taking more of an iterating and improving approach after launch?

That's a really good question. Connect Financial is a product-led organisation, which means that we use data and user insights and iterate over time to create an awesome customer experience.

With that said, there are security, regulatory, licensing and partnership parts to the product that DO need to be perfect for launch.

So it's really a combination of those two approaches.

When will the staking portal be updated so that all fields populate?

We're spending the bulk of our development efforts in migrating the functionality of the token portal into the client portal at the moment. We haven't forgotten about the token portal, and we'll return to addressing some of the functionality issues close to or after launch.

What reporting do you guys expect the company to release to customers in future? Eg earnings reports / audit reports / fortnightly updates etc if any?

We have been in touch with a well known auditing company who produces a daily report users can check that gives a general health check, assets maintained and liabilities owed giving a percent to reflect.

Updates in the future will come more spontaneously as we have product releases, partnerships, and client portal updates.

Has there been any work done on the Treasury pieces?

Yes! It's in active development right now. Our smart contract team is currently focused on the DAO and onchain treasury pieces. Our regular Medium update articles are still the best place to stay up to date with the latest developments.

My question is in reference to the Trustswap collaboration and where we stand with that?

We are still open for the collaboration with Trustswap but we are focusing the launch of the core platform prior to formalizing or moving forward with partnerships. It is best for both parties at this point.

Bearing in mind crypto is expecting to have one billion users by 2024, what are your targets for customer numbers and what market cap are you aiming for by this time period?

We are focused on attracting the current target market, however, we are constantly expanding our marketing initiatives on a global scale to captivate users to the Connect Financial product offering. As crypto and its adoption continues to exponentially grow we aim to correlate with its growth.

Is CF operational during 9-5 Monday to Friday? What activities do the team partake in together outside of work? (i.e. what's the work culture like?

Yes! We're 9-5. In almost every timezone around the world.We have team members in the US, Latin America, Canada, Oceania, India and the Philippines. Of course many of our core system functions operate 24/7.

Which fiat onramps and offramps will you have available at launch? And what are the plans to expand this?

At launch, we will allow ACH/SEPA/WIRE and a few other bank initiated transfers. We will have a quick follow to allow debit/credit card purchasing but that requires a little more work on the risk side to develop. Expansion plans are being evolved but for now that covers the LARGE majority of users needs. Offramp is the same

Are there still plans to have us test the product or are they skipping that?

Yes, we will have a small cohort of community members test the product before the full production launch.

Are we going to see protection for accounts similar to what we see in banks or better? How is CNFI going prevent fraudsters from gaining access to the account?

Yes, you will see standard protection protocols such as 2FA, account passwords, MFA, IP and Device tracking/authorization. Then within the platform you will have the option to turn on enhanced features such as whitelisting of addresses, IP addresses and locking your account.

Activity that is viewed as out of the norm will require user action to authorize, such as out of country IP logging in.

What is the status of the DAO and when will that piece be released? What is the status of the DAO tokens? Are those portions of the websites/contracts near completion?

I'll refer back to my earlier reply on this... it's all part of the same development effort, and is progressing well. Parts of the DAO have evolved, and we'll be releasing updates in the whitepaper over the coming weeks.

As for the release, we won't have a target date until the code is fully stable, audited and ready for deployment - keep updated on our discord channel or medium updates.

When Cards?

This is a very important question and any answer besides "Releasing today" is going to feel like we've fallen short to our community.

The answer is we are working diligently to get to that point. It's not a great answer but there are a lot of hurdles to overcome that we've crossed off the list already. We are definitely on the home stretch with our check lists, technology is near completed and getting tested, integration with our card processor is complete, physical delivery plans are set and those logistics are in place.

It's been a journey for sure and one we've enjoyed taking, we've grown and developed a product we are proud of and there is nothing more that we want than to have it in your hands.

What influencers are CF approaching? What deal will they be getting in exchange for their videos? (I suspect most of the existing holders will want to know details such as vesting schedules etc to avoid being dumped on).

We haven't built our community around pumpanomics and will not change this approach when our cards launch. We'll work with social, crypto, Fintech and global influencers that best portray our corporate standards to partner in marketing initiatives. We have a solid product and believe in its success without pump. At this time, influencers will likely only be supporting the unboxing event of our cards and associated packaging with compensation matching accordingly, but not utilizing CNFI.

You've openly said before that the Team Tokens would be locked for 12 months from when the product launches. Is there any reason that cannot be done before then?

I have stated that the team tokens would be locked for 12 months additionally after product launch and that still holds true.

What is on the future roadmap of the CF product suite beyond credit cards and the wallets? Does Connect have any proposed acquisitions / sectors lined up?

Good question, with a two part answer.

Connect Financial is a product ecoystem that sits under the Connect DAO structure. Looking at Connect Financial specifically, we have a number of features planned for 2022 and beyond including alternative lending options, interest earning wallets, staking wallets and point-of-sale partnerships. A lot of this is roadmap is already public and is talked about in the white paper.

Connect DAO on the other hand, has both Equity (new projects) and Venture Capital (investment and incubation) verticals. Obviously the team is focused on executing the Connect Financial product as our first priority, but we have a number of projects sitting under the Equity and VC verticals that will be rolled out in the near-mid future. We can't talk about the specifics yet, but watch this space -- there are some big things coming.

Will you be attending futurist conference in Toronto?

Not at this time. Our focus is remaining on delivery of our platform and product launch.

Will there be a single-use virtual card as an option too?

Yes, we will be offering this post launch.

Now that NEXO have released their competitive product, how does CF plan to gain market share from them, given they're already better known and presumably will have a larger marketing budget? Has there been any thoughts given to guerrilla marketing methods?

Competition in the space is not a zero-sum game.

Other collateralized loan products in the market legitimizes the space and a stronger market ultimately lift all boats. With that said, the CF cards are a more premium product and we'll be leaning heavily into the lifestyle rewards aspect of the program to entice customers.

For example, if you've been following along with the recent reduction in rewards for the [insert competitor] cards, cashback and staking rewards are incredibly popular with customers and we feel that we have the best-in-class product.

Are users able to pay off their credit card spend using fiat currencies?

Yes.

Which line items have been checked off since our last Roadmap update a few months back?

Going through individual line items of the roadmap is a little out of scope for this format, but we'll continue to use the bi-weekly Medium updates as our main place to update on overall project progress.