Using blockchain to build a self-sovereign financial identity
The Covid-19 virus has had a significant impact on Africa’s economy and the financial sector over the past six months. In April 2020, the International Monetary Funds (IMF) released a report that highlighted the declining economic outlook for the region, with GDP expected to contract by 1.6% and real per-capita GDP falling by 3.9%. Patrick Njorgem, Governor, Central Bank of Kenya highlighted the importance of leveraging new digital-financial technology to support individuals and businesses with monetary transfers, loans and savings services. Given the macro-economic impact of COVID-19 and ongoing business restrictions, it is critical to keep finance flowing not just to the top of the pyramid but throughout the pyramid right to the bottom thus ensuring those who need it most — the un/underserved — are not excluded or left behind. In order for banks, fintechs, and microfinance institutions to service customers more inclusively, adopting digital financial infrastructure and utilising holistic financial data on their customers is the key to unlocking new markets and extending new financial services to the entire population.
In the past year, with support from ETC Labs, the Pngme team has been working to advance digital-financial technology with our financial data platform in East and West Africa. We’ve seen success working with banks and microfinance institutions who have been able to lend remotely and speed up their customer evaluation, allocation, and approval of loans in a transparent manner. In a recent survey of Readycash agents in Nigeria, we found how transformative the impact of fast and secure loans have been for entrepreneurs and small businesses.
We do this through the integration of blockchain technology that allows us to bring a trustless layer of security to the data we process for the user and give data sovereignty back to our users. We look to continue working with ETC Labs and building on Ethereum Classic in the next phase of Pngme’s development to propel our mission to put the user back in control of their own data, giving them more choice, and ultimately financial opportunity and freedom.
By building on Ethereum Classic and Ethereum we create an immutable audit trail of data provenance that is validated and verified using our off-chain, horizontally scalable data platform that aggregates identity, open banking data, alternative financial data, and behavioral data through our mobile app which people use to create a self-sovereign financial passport. This data is then queried through our unified data API by financial institutions only with the permission and consent of the financial institution’s customer (the data owner). By notarizing verified financial data to a trustless distributed ledger, we are able to bring a verified data layer to the financial ecosystem so financial institutions can serve people through the entire financial pyramid — from top to bottom.
What is a trustless system? A trustless system means that the participants involved do not need to know or trust each other or a third party for the system to function.
Our trustless blockchain infrastructure enables financial institutions to deploy and access more capital to un/underserved individuals by providing a verifiable data provenance layer to capital providers and investors. Doing so allows financial institutions to access more capital to finance their growth and in turn, serve more customers.
Similar to ETC Labs’ mission to improve people’s lives using Ethereum Classic, it is our vision at Pngme that by using blockchain technology as a trustless data layer, we will shift the way in which financial institutions and un/underserved people access finance. By putting the user in control of their own financial data enables a more efficient and trustworthy market where the consumer has the choice and opportunity to leverage their data footprint to their advantage.
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