BitShares Forum
Other => Random Discussion => Topic started by: matt608 on February 10, 2015, 07:26:44 am
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http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/02/09/bitbeat-kenyas-bitpesa-raises-1-1-million-expands-operations/
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Good news! More inroads into Africa!
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Africa definitely stands to benefit the most, in relative terms, among continents, from crypto, and especially bitshares.
On that front, I'm very excited about this mobile wallet. Wow.
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Africa definitely stands to benefit the most, in relative terms, among continents, from crypto, and especially bitshares.
On that front, I'm very excited about this mobile wallet. Wow.
In Africa everybody use a mobile phone but the problem is 99% don't have Internet on them, so light wallet will not help much. What we need is a SMS solution. So basically we need a big mobile provider in our side.
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Africa definitely stands to benefit the most, in relative terms, among continents, from crypto, and especially bitshares.
On that front, I'm very excited about this mobile wallet. Wow.
In Africa everybody use a mobile phone but the problem is 99% don't have Internet on them, so light wallet will not help much. What we need is a SMS solution. So basically we need a big mobile provider in our side.
Very true, but I wonder if it isn't more like 97% - and that 3% of smartphone-enabled African business is not to be sneezed at. Seriously.
To cater for SMS customers, no telco partner is needed; it's just a matter of web-wallet provision with SMS integration.
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Africa definitely stands to benefit the most, in relative terms, among continents, from crypto, and especially bitshares.
On that front, I'm very excited about this mobile wallet. Wow.
In Africa everybody use a mobile phone but the problem is 99% don't have Internet on them, so light wallet will not help much. What we need is a SMS solution. So basically we need a big mobile provider in our side.
Very true, but I wonder if it isn't more like 97% - and that 3% of smartphone-enabled African business is not to be sneezed at. Seriously.
To cater for SMS customers, no telco partner is needed; it's just a matter of web-wallet provision with SMS integration.
smartphone is cheap now. And how do you know we need a SMS solution?do you have some figure?
I do not think SMS is a good solution, because it may seems hard to understand the concept.
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Africa definitely stands to benefit the most, in relative terms, among continents, from crypto, and especially bitshares.
On that front, I'm very excited about this mobile wallet. Wow.
In Africa everybody use a mobile phone but the problem is 99% don't have Internet on them, so light wallet will not help much. What we need is a SMS solution. So basically we need a big mobile provider in our side.
Very true, but I wonder if it isn't more like 97% - and that 3% of smartphone-enabled African business is not to be sneezed at. Seriously.
To cater for SMS customers, no telco partner is needed; it's just a matter of web-wallet provision with SMS integration.
smartphone is cheap now. And how do you know we need a SMS solution?do you have some figure?
I do not think SMS is a good solution, because it may seems hard to understand the concept.
For the African marketplace this makes sense actually. SMS dominates the marketplace. You have to understand the masses there can't afford brand new phones. Most of the phones we have tossed over the past decade are now being used and repaired there. I spent several months in Nigeria myself and actually spent a lot of time with a phone repair guy and saw first hand how cellphones were treated there. Though that was over a decade ago.. the economic conditions haven't gotten better.
I know there are all kinds of solutions that are being developed around the use of SMS as a medium to reach the masses there. I have been approached a few times on a few projects in the Nigerian marketplace.. and among them was an SMS based solution.
I think something like this would be HUGE actually. This to me would be a worthy project with the right connections could take off.
Nigeria alone is a population of 174 million.. and because of the social economic situation there and the difficulties the current banking system imposes in moving money.. yeah.. I think we have a sweet spot opportunity.
If anybody out there is interested in pursuing this, I have some pretty good connections in Nigeria that could possibly help to gain a foothold in the market there. Oh yeah and I have a data center in Canada to power it too.
Saying that now.. while we are talking about Africa as a market.. lets not forget that SMS is still just as much a standard in messaging worldwide.. no need for an app.. cross platform compatible.. yeah I can see this working.
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Africa definitely stands to benefit the most, in relative terms, among continents, from crypto, and especially bitshares.
On that front, I'm very excited about this mobile wallet. Wow.
In Africa everybody use a mobile phone but the problem is 99% don't have Internet on them, so light wallet will not help much. What we need is a SMS solution. So basically we need a big mobile provider in our side.
Very true, but I wonder if it isn't more like 97% - and that 3% of smartphone-enabled African business is not to be sneezed at. Seriously.
To cater for SMS customers, no telco partner is needed; it's just a matter of web-wallet provision with SMS integration.
smartphone is cheap now. And how do you know we need a SMS solution?do you have some figure?
I do not think SMS is a good solution, because it may seems hard to understand the concept.
For the African marketplace this makes sense actually. SMS dominates the marketplace. You have to understand the masses there can't afford brand new phones. Most of the phones we have tossed over the past decade are now being used and repaired there. I spent several months in Nigeria myself and actually spent a lot of time with a phone repair guy and saw first hand how cellphones were treated there. Though that was over a decade ago.. the economic conditions haven't gotten better.
I know there are all kinds of solutions that are being developed around the use of SMS as a medium to reach the masses there. I have been approached a few times on a few projects in the Nigerian marketplace.. and among them was an SMS based solution.
I think something like this would be HUGE actually. This to me would be a worthy project with the right connections could take off.
Nigeria alone is a population of 174 million.. and because of the social economic situation there and the difficulties the current banking system imposes in moving money.. yeah.. I think we have a sweet spot opportunity.
If anybody out there is interested in pursuing this, I have some pretty good connections in Nigeria that could possibly help to gain a foothold in the market there. Oh yeah and I have a data center in Canada to power it too.
Saying that now.. while we are talking about Africa as a market.. lets not forget that SMS is still just as much a standard in messaging worldwide.. no need for an app.. cross platform compatible.. yeah I can see this working.
I wonder how this could work I mean technically ? If anyone have any hints in how this could be achieved I'll be very curios to hear it. I know that with blokchain.info you can send bitcoin with SMS, email and even Facebook, is this feasible with bitshares ?
The remittance market is huge in Africa, the reason is because they already using their phone to do a lot of financial transaction so it comes completely natural to them. BitPesa charge 3% witch is still a lot people there are really really poor so there is room to improvement. Also the sender is exposed to the bitcoin fluctuation so he needs to send it right away if not he may loose money. I think bitPesa would love to offer a stable solution to sender like bitUSD would be great but then we come down to our biggest problem on/off ramps. Also BitPesa uses a infrastructure that already exist m-pesa mobile wallets.
I also wonder about the SMS security I'm not sure if the message are even encrypted so this could be a potential problem.
I think if someone manage to solve all those problem and especially if they offer cheaper transfer rates they could be the new kings of Africa.
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If you can send bitcoin by SMS, you can send bitshares (or bitUSD).
I'm aware of two young services that I'd like to see grow, especially to include bitshares.
https://www.kipochi.com have an emerging-market focus.
https://beamremit.com/ are in the remittance space, principally Ghana but also supporting Nigeria (as do TransferWise, now). I also know the founder of https://kitiwa.com (who seems close to the management of bitpesa) and am close to campaigning what may be the first bitshares delegate on (West) African soil, to be hosted in a data centre in Accra, besides some of Google's own boxes.
DataSecurityNode - I'd be happy to work with you.
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If you can send bitcoin by SMS, you can send bitshares (or bitUSD).
I'm aware of two young services that I'd like to see grow, especially to include bitshares.
https://www.kipochi.com have an emerging-market focus.
https://beamremit.com/ are in the remittance space, principally Ghana but also supporting Nigeria (as do TransferWise, now). I also know the founder of https://kitiwa.com (who seems close to the management of bitpesa) and am close to campaigning what may be the first bitshares delegate on (West) African soil, to be hosted in a data centre in Accra, besides some of Google's own boxes.
DataSecurityNode - I'd be happy to work with you.
Looking up for more details on your delegate and you plan. Anyhow I sometimes travel in West Africa too and have a few contacts there too so let me know if I could help.