- A start-up Fintech company, BitMinutes Inc was founded in the U.S.
- BitMinutes tokens (BMTs) are exchangeable into universal prepaid airtime minutes.
- Prepaid minutes are already traded informally as currency within-country mobile networks, available to billions of mobile phone owners.
- BitMinutes’ tokens also allow peer-to-peer value transfer to millions of bank and mobile accounts across 70 contracted countries and prepaid airtime top-ups to over 4 billion mobile accounts in over 120 countries.
- BitMinutes plans to facilitate the expansion of micro-credit lending in communities where lending is rare and too expensive for most individual borrowers.
- BitMinutes’ ownership and transaction records will establish a new type of consumer credit score for emerging market consumers who currently struggle with limited access to capital and a lack of traditional banking services.
- BitMinutes will create payment platforms in countries where it launches to facilitate mobile payments similar to the M-Pesa platform which has achieved success in Kenya, but has not yet been widely adopted in other countries.