At my local Bitcoin meetup there was a live video presentation with @KenyaCoin presenting Machankura https://8333.mobi
It's a custodial service that allows African people to send and receive sats to a phonenumber without mobile data/wifi simply using a feature phone. It works using USSD.
The user can receive via Lightning address, like:
⚡[phonenumber]@8333.mobi
And then using the USSD commands, they can send to any other number that has signed up, or can Send to any Lightning address.
User can set a password to lock funds and unlocked it when needing to spend sats.
The same service is accessible as well on WhatsApp to simplify the on-boarding for beginners.
https://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=27737625720&text=Hello%20%F0%9F%91%8B
You just type 1 to 8 to navigate the different options from the menu.
He made an LN transaction from his African country to Europe that came across in 2 seconds.
Serves six countries (in Africa) with a total population topping 400M people.
- Ghana
- Kenya
- Malawi
- Namibia
- Nigeria
- South Africa
- Uganda
In the backend it uses multi-sig with Frost and for USSD it uses https://africastalking.com/
There is a 1% transaction fees to cover the service cost.
@KenyaCoin will be presenting Machankura at the Bitcoin Conference in Cape Town, 26-28 January 2024
https://adoptingbitcoin.org/capetown-2024/