Introducing Access Network: People, Empowered
There are still over 2 Billion adults — all told, over 6 Billion people — that are financially excluded today and are thus blocked from realizing their true economic potential. We know you’ve heard that figure before, but sit with it for a second… most of the world’s population does not have basic financial access.
Recurring Problem: Looking for Solutions in all the Wrong Places
Despite the strides made in recent years, financial access simply isn’t accelerating rapidly enough. And while sometimes well-meaning, existing efforts have been nothing short of paternalistic.
When centralized authorities are the ones making decisions that impact how people can access money, gateways to financial freedom are erected, dictating the manner, and slowing the rate, at which progress can occur.
Internationally, systems of aid create a sense of economic dependency instead of empowerment. And relying on Banks, Mobile Carriers and any other incumbent institutions to increase financial access locally, is inherently patronizing, as those choices should be guided by the actual people who find themselves excluded.
As we mention in our forthcoming Founding Statement,
“In its pursuit of progress through the ages, how careless humanity has been, to leave so many of its members behind. In its attempts to develop what it once discarded, how audacious it has been to presume those needs, and brash to dictate the manner and confines of its implementation”
With the advent of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology there is now the potential for people to have permissionless access to a broad range of tools and new economic models.
The crypto-community needs access to a group of users with glaring pain-points, and the developing world needs access to the newest and most innovative solutions: These two communities each hold the keys to each other’s problem.
However, access between these communities is limited because of the inability to financially and technologically connect— the classic chicken and egg conundrum. Without the ability for developing world users to easily exchange from fiat to crypto —much less require a smartphone to do so— one of the greatest leapfrog potentials of our time cannot be realized.
This is why we are launching the Access Network.
Introducing the Access Network:
Access Network (ACX Network) is a decentralized system for financial access that gives the people control over their own incentivized token economy, empowering them to speed up their development and have access to a limitless set of Dapps to accelerate it further over time. And by partnering up with local exchange networks, the participation barriers of lack of liquidity and smartphone adoption can be overcome.
Built by the team behind Atlas Money — a P2P banking platform with over 300 agents that provide door-to-door financial services to over 17,000 users in Ghana and Senegal — Access will have real-world liquidity and use by integrating with Atlas’ existing network of branchless bankers and financial users after launch — who can all transact and vote on the Network, enabling the development of tools that they want to create and use.
Who is behind Access?
The Atlas team, whose founders are Mickey Costa and James Schuler. With a raw thesis of using blockchain to bank the unbanked, the team moved to Ghana and spent over 2 years building their business from the ground up.
It was in Ghana that the team found the product market fit of a network of people banking each other daily. Local Micro-Finance Institutions were collapsing in droves, as were individual people that would visit others daily to collect their money. When this kept happening and the people kept preferring the same avenue of service, we realized that all the existing P2P system needed was a little accountability. We built an app for a person to become their own community banker (called an Atlas Agent) and transact with others, without the end user needing a smartphone to receive alerts or have visibility of their savings. We then instituted Atlas Credit, requiring Agents to pre-purchase value in order to guarantee the safety of user fiat deposits. Afterwards, we took the Atlas service to Senegal to ensure cross-country product market fit.
As you can discern from our Founding Vision in 2016, Access Network was always on our mind, and empowering existing communities through an ecosystem that they would be free to define themselves was always the plan. We just felt that it was so crucial to first spend time listening to local communities and ensuring that their was a real foundation that could connect them to the leapfrog potential of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.
Well, now is the time for that to finally happen.
We are so excited to build a community, that is in and of itself, built around providing access between existing communities.
Stay Tuned,
Mickey, James and the Access Family
