Digital Currency to Replace Cash-Only Economy

Asma BalochLast Updated: Mar 25, 2016

Mobile payment systems have generated a malleable set-up that has made digital currency accessible to people formerly locked into the cash-only economy.

Digital Currency to Replace Cash-Only Economy

In a recent meeting at the Gordon Institute of Business Science, Van Rensburg revealed that the future of the technology is in the prospect to improve more mobile products, such as investments and insurance applications, that wouldn’t have been imaginable in a cash-only economy.

After presenting the first mobile banking solution in 1999, Van Rensburg initiated Fundamo, which progressed to turn into one of the world’s most unconventional mobile financial service platforms. The platform has been arrayed in almost 34 countries across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, providing mobile financial facilities to unbanked and under-banked mobile users consisting person-to-person payments, bill payments, wireless airtime top-up, and ticketing.

He also informed that the development of mobile payment systems was “a revolution that many are not aware of.”

“If you live in a cash economy, it is incredibly difficult to budget and to save. The majority of the global population doesn’t have access to electronic payments.”

He enlightened.

Fundamo was a marketable achievement, but Van Rensburg clarified that the technology was also about fighting poverty and being able to teach individuals about money by giving them entree to the history of their transactions and spending patterns. In countries like Kenya, Pakistan and Bangladesh, more mobile payments were made than transactions of any other type.

He further explained that mobile payments still functioned on a closed-loop system, associated to a particular payment device or system. Creating an open loop would heighten the efficacy of mobile payments and their interchangeability.

Rensburg said mobile payments were probable to substitute transactions such as online card payments in the near future. Digital currencies, in which encryption methods were used to adjust the cohort of units and authenticate the transfer of funds, such as Bitcoin were improbable to be used on an extensive scale, as the price would merely be expensive.

Also Read: Standard Chartered Bank Extends its Digital Banking Presence