Blockchain, Mobile Money, and Financial Access: How the Dots Connect in the Token Economy

In Africa, banks have been in a state of failure for years. This is one of the reasons why the continent lags behind on financial services innovation, according to the UN. The token economy is an important next step for the continent.

Blockchain gives people, governments, and institutions the ability to rewrite the rules of financial infrastructure — to bring services to market faster than what mainstream economies can support.

Here’s how Access Network is planning to use blockchain and cryptocurrency to bring new financial infrastructure to Africa. The Access Network token economy will integrate with on-the-ground financial service providers, including Atlas Money– a mobile money platform in West Africa that turns individuals with smartphones into mobile bank branches. Bankers and end-users will earn and redeem reward tokens for their day-to-day financial activities.

In this photo, an Atlas mobile banker manages funds through her app. This visual introduces perspective into what’s possible with blockchain tech.

The Big Picture

Build on top of existing human infrastructure

Blockchain and token economies support creative applications of technology to how humans make decisions. That’s because transparency, trust, and economic value are essential to the long-term viability of token-based business models.

Token economic models create immediate pathways to adapt to the market dynamics of African communities, where decentralization in decision-making is the norm, and people self-organize into groups to manage their day-to-day.

Align with existing economic activity

The ACX tokenomics model is designed to:

• Gamify the process of infrastructure growth. Reward use and adoption while leveraging existing social practices, communication networks, and consumer hardware.
• Incentivize evolution. Reward ground teams and developers that improve and add new functionality to the ecosystem.
• Self-equalize. Create a token that provides utility and serves as a scarce resource, with supply and demand that reflects the value of the network’s services to the end-user.

The tokenomics model will support the creation of banking infrastructure that aligns with human incentives, on-the-ground.

Expand financial access in Africa

Decentralized financial infrastructure gives access to the people who need it, who are currently being left out. Access has already tested this premise on-the-ground, in advance of the blockchain-based technology launching.

Reviewing a transaction on the Atlas Money app

Blockchain tech introduces the following capabilities:

• Bringing new banking products to Africa. Develops, tests and regularly launches new financial services applications for African economies.
• Reducing dependencies. Make it possible to launch financial services products without middlemen, fraud, red tape, or risk.
• Overcoming barriers to adoption. The Atlas Money app integrates a two-currency model, where the store of value is decoupled from the token utility. Fiat-based savings credit allows underserved users to transact without worrying about price volatility. ACX crypto-tokens create an incentive layer.

Our focus is to scale our infrastructure to the masses of unbanked and underbanked. The Access Network will grow through an ecosystem of ACX-integrated applications and agent operators, beginning with the existing infrastructure behind Atlas.

An Atlas banker meets with a local shop owner and entrepreneur

Instant integration with local communities

Atlas Money is the first local service provider in the Access Network and already has on-the-ground traction with over 500 agents and 30,000 weekly active users in Ghana and Senegal. You can read about the path the team took, to scale adoption from 0 to 30,000 active users, in this article.

Additional partnerships and international expansion

Access is also actively integrating with larger mobile money operators and micro-finance institutions, offering them white-labeled software and ground support.

Join Our Journey

We’re spearheading a financial revolution, with key backers and partners. Become a part of the movement today:

Website: http://joinaccess.com
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/acx_network/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ACXnetwork/
Twitter: @ACX_Network
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/acxnetwork/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/accessnetwork/

Contributors Statement
This work was a collaboration between the entire Access Network team, ranging from the CEO to CTO, COO, Chief of Staff, and other members of leadership. Emily Burchill, Shannon Wu, Ritika Puri, and Karissa Domondon created this story.

Disclosure
The opinions expressed are those of the authors and are no guarantee of the future performance of any Access Network fund or service. This material has been prepared for educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide, and should not be relied upon for, investment, accounting, legal or tax advice. Access Network is currently unlaunched and has not announced a token generation event. Blog posts are intended to provide education about the business model and its path to development, only.