A blockchain-based company has unveiled plans to roll out a global network of self-service kiosks — enabling millions of unbanked people around the world to pay bills, make purchases and access other financial services. KIBIS says a plethora of services are available through its kiosks. Consumers can pay for gas, water and electricity, book airline tickets and check flight details, subscribe to TV subscription services such as Amazon Prime and Netflix, and buy prepaid vouchers for themselves or loved ones. The payment method accepted by the self-service kiosks will be cash and cryptocurrencies in permitted countries. Other payment options will …

The company behind “one of the world’s most secure mobile cryptocurrency wallets” says its platform offers banking-grade features to protect tokens, while ensuring that completing transactions is as simple as “sending a text.” SovereignWallet says one of its main motivations is promoting financial inclusion and enabling the unbanked to create accounts for crypto directly from their smartphones. Through its wallet, Ethereum and its own utility token can be sent to recipients easily — and users receive notifications when transactions are completed. It plans to support other cryptocurrencies in the future. According to its white paper, the platform is hoping to …

A new blockchain-based ecosystem is vowing to help 490 million unbanked and underbanked people across Southeast Asia access modern financial services. According to TraXion, only 54 percent of adults in developing countries have access to a bank account. This is even more keenly felt in the Philippines, where 80 percent of families are unbanked or underbanked. Across the country, credit cards have a penetration rate of just 3 percent. The platform is hoping to create “fair and easy access” to a suite of services including low-cost remittances, savings accounts, cashless payments, peer-to-peer lending and insurance. It believes that opening the …

If bitcoin acceptance reaches a critical mass where necessities of food, shelter, and clothing can be bought with it, it will likely have reached a tipping point where it displaces national currencies. In this scenario, many areas of the world would be leapfrogging banking infrastructure and traditional money wire transfers. Most notably this would describe the financial landscape in developing economies such as the nations of Africa. Bitcoin Leapfrogging Banks Leapfrogging is described as a theory of economic development, which skips inferior or obsolete technologies in order to move directly to advanced ones. Take, for example, phone coverage in African …