For years, mobile credit has been alternative currency in many African countries, Now, Bitcoin(BTC) can be sent and received without an Internet connection using just mobile phones.
The start-up behind this breakthrough innovation is called Machankura and they currently offer their services in 6 African countries including Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda.
They are a custodial Bitcoin(BTC) service similar to Wallet of Satoshi except you do not need an internet connection.
Using only USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) codes which are used by all mobile telecom networks for needed direct communication between a user’s phone and the telecom operator, Machankura offer users the joys of the Bitcoin(BTC) Lightning Network with just a mobile phone.
Users can send and receive satoshis with little to no cost and in mere seconds.
As the user’s lightning wallet address (LNURL) is tied to their SIM card’s telephone number, any satoshis saved locally are saved to one’s SIM card which now acts as a Bitcoin(BTC) wallet. This is quite handy for people using feature phones / dumbphones – Phones without internet and other computing capabilities.
With Machankura, we can gleam of a near future in which many Africans explore their services for cheap and efficient transfer of finances from the diaspora to their people back home while going around layers of protocol and red tape.
The least of ones troubles when sending money from overseas to Africa is the need to have compliant bank accounts in two different countries. The banks may not be on trading terms, the fees are exorbitant and it takes forever for the money to finally be settled on the receiver’s account.
A much cheaper alternative will thus be to turn one’s funds into Bitcoin(BTC) via a Bitcoin(BTC) exchange like Binance and transfer these via lightning to the feature phone of the recipient back home in say Uganda. Again, no internet required for the exchange to happen. Which is very interesting and absolutely convenient.
The same could apply for local monetary exchanges with one sending Bitcoin(BTC) from one phone to another within the same country. This however will be a threat to the mobile money service jobs that support the livelihoods of many. However, alternative payment solutions springing up is nothing new and certainly, like the banks, the telecoms cannot be too happy about this.
Mobile Credit has been the technology of choice to make direct payments in Africa for many years. “GSMA’s 2014 Mobile Money for the Unbanked Survey reported the existence of 146 million mobile money accounts in Sub-Saharan Africa (61.9 million active within the past 90 days).” writes Ingrid Brill at Berkley.
But with great diversity comes great opportunity.
Despite the WWE match right now for the most efficient, effective, and value-protecting digital money payments service, I see payment start-ups consuming a lot of energy as they compete for market share. Speaking of energy takes me to the food being eaten by their corporate employees, fuel for the CEOs cars, and plastic coffee cups to fuel worker productivity.
Electricity is also consumed to serve thousands of database computer systems, lighting for office spaces, marketing accessories like speakers and billboard-sized advertisement screens.
Energy will thus be used even more and as it is the King resource on which all else relies, in an unexpected roundabout way, agricultural productivity, electricity and fuel optimization will increase.
That long-shot aside, I believe Machankura will take the heavy-weight championship title of payment solutions one of these years. Why, it is dealing in #Bitcoin(BTC).
