Interview with Blockbonds

 

How it all started

Every day, millions of people are transferring money to family and friends, and a large part of the money finds its way deep into the rural side areas of developing countries where people are unbanked. Despite many of them are among the poorest, they still have to pay the highest fee for transferring money because they are part of the unbanked population.

Almost half of the world’s adult population is unbanked or underbanked, meaning they have limited or no access to the traditional financial system. We want the world to be financially connected.

Our mission is to give everyone the opportunity to be banked through innovative technology, accessible for anyone who holds a smartphone with Internet access.

We believe, by offering financial services to people that never before could reach such services, we touch upon their dignity, self-esteem and integrity in a positive way by helping them to take their first step out of the cash society.

 

Area of focus

SPENN is a free to download mobile application that offer free transfers, free payments, a free simple point-of-sale solution for businesses and an innovative way to withdraw and deposit money. The app is build upon blockchain technology and enables instant, secure and cost efficient transactions on a global scale.

There are 2 billion people in the world in the category of unbanked or underbanked – Blockbonds strives to democratize the access to financial markets for everyone in the world, by bridging the cryptosphere with traditional finance. By utilizing blockchain technology, we are able to create a payment system, in which everyone can manage their savings, payments and investments in an honest, transparent and secure way.

 

Challenges in the geographical areas of influence

One of the main challenges we are facing is the low level of financial education of the population in emerging markets. Key is a simple product, combined with an educational marketing approach that builds understanding and confidence in the product. We have simplified our advanced financial platform by creating an interface that is easy to understand and use by anyone, regardless of their background, education, age or knowledge of banking applications.

 

Co-operation and partnerships

Blockbonds achieved a partnership with UN Women after winning a procurement, targeting the empowerment of women through financial education.

Together with UN Women we completed a successful pilot at the worlds largest refugee camp based in Kakuma, Kenya. The target of the pilot was to educate, test and demonstrate the usability for our product SPENN to empower women.

 

Successes

With almost 300.000 customers in Rwanda, Tanzania, the Philippines and Kenya SPENN is continuously growing and has already made an impact on the lives of many people around the globe. In February 2019 Blockbonds introduced its blockchain-based payment solution to Tanzania, a highly promising market with great adoption rate.

Blockbonds is in in the operational and regulatory process with more than 15 countries to be launched in 2019 and 2020.

 

The Financial Inclusion Summit takes place in Oslo, Norway, on 28 March 2019. To find out more or request an invitation, visit: https://financial-inclusion.com/#register

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