Africas first true cryptocurrency set to be released in 2019

A new mobile phone cryptocurrency network is underdevelopment and is set to be released in 2019, a South African banker has announced.

Shaun Burrow who resides in Mauritius said his virtually free digital platform dubbed DéMars (DMC) will deliver financial services to unbanked adults in developing markets like Sub-Saharan Africa.

According to Burrow, two thirds of the left out group own mobile phones and this presents a lot of opportunities.

“I was simply blown away to learn that 1.7 billion adults don’t have access to basic financial services,” he said.

He further added that DMC will take care of the high costs of sending money in Africa as the product is virtually free.

“The cost of payments to Sub-Saharan Africa and within Sub-Saharan Africa are the highest in the world, they range from 10-20% of the money being sent home. It’s simply an unjust tax on ordinary, hardworking people,” Burrow said.

“The platform will reduce the high cost of remittances to and within developing markets and enable access to simple lending, insurance and savings products,” he added.

Burrow says the invention responds to the resultant demand after global products such as Bitcon, Ripple and Ethereum failed to provide any real utility for the African consumer since they aren’t designed for a data-constrained environment.

“There are currently a number of blockchain projects coming out of the African continent calling themselves Africa’s first ‘cryptocurrency.’ I believe that these claimants are being rather liberal with the truth. I am yet to find one which is not an Ethereum ERC-20 token,” he said.

Burrow insists the new currency has features across multiple traditional forms is “lite, fast, scalable, private and secure to transact with.”

According to him, the digital currency is expected to acquire large-scale consumer adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2021.