Micro-Loans via Blockchain and dumb-phones
Brac reached out to us to scope their WE-SOLVE project. They needed a secure way to distribute micro-loans in remote locations in Africa, where children cannot do their homeworks due to working in the fields and lacking electricity in the evenings.
Brac had already spotted a number of organisations sucha s Solar Sisters: women being reliable, they were trusted by the company to distribute micro-loans and provide relevant solar panels to the population.
The question we were asked was to secure the payment transactions and resulting instalments. To enable this, we connected a permissionned Blockchain to a SMS server. This allowed distribution of loans by Brac HQ, based on SMS received by Solar Sisters, and funding wallets on-chain that the end-user could check also by SMS.
Weekly and monthly instalments were also a challenge. Several alternatives were made possible. Either paying back in cash via entrusted officiers, or by an app on tablets used by the employer. In the latter, the employer would split the salary two ways: one for his employee as usual, one for the repayment. On-chain tracking was implemented via secured features.
We have been very proud to have been part of this first step in helping women improve their own lives and the lives of their communities in Tanzania, and we wish the best of success to this initiative in its roll-out plan.