Excerpt
I chat with a team member of Machankura about how they’re making Bitcoin transactions possible through SMS – no internet needed! See how it works and discover why many people in Africa lack internet access. This solution is bringing Bitcoin to more people worldwide.
Transcript
So, please tell us about Machankura. Machankura, when we started out, we were a company that enabled sending and receiving of bitcoin using USSD. If you are familiar, I’m from Kenya with the M-Pesa platform, it has integrated the USSD, that’s the GSM network that’s normally used to send SMSs. So we’ve integrated Lightning onto it. Why this is beneficial is because even though we have internet connectivity in Africa, it’s still expensive for a majority of the population to afford. And if they want to transact in bitcoin, they may end up having a challenge because of not being able to afford data. So with Machankura you can be able to access it on the USSD. I can maybe give a demonstration on how that works. Show us how that works. So USSD is basically like a menu that’s working like text messages, right? Yes, absolutely. Okay, and you can send and receive Lightning through it. Yes, absolutely. So the code is different in different countries. The USSD code is available in seven countries so far. So the Kenyan code is this. So when I dial this, you have this menu. Remember, you can send bitcoin, receive bitcoin, the balance, and everything. So you can maybe try the send, receive, send bitcoin option. So you see you can be able to send bitcoin to a phone number, a Lightning address, a username, an LN invoice, and even on-chain. The majority of people, their phone number will not be secure. We provided the username option for that because we don’t want people sharing their phone numbers. It’s not safe. That’s great, yeah. Yeah, and if you’re not on the platform, you also have a Lightning address so you can be able to send to any other wallet besides us. We also offer the on-chain option for those who just want to send and receive on-chain as well. Okay, but it’s a custodial wallet, right? It is a custodial wallet. So how is your money secured? I mean, for yourself, if you don’t have a key, you have a password or how does it work? So we do have a password. I do not have a password on my end, but you do have a password. And in terms of the WhatsApp version, there is a Google authenticator as well that is integrated. So we make sure that it’s secure. But otherwise, when we’re carrying out onboarding, I’m also a Bitcoin indicator, I make sure to tell our users that this is a custodial wallet. So I also introduce them to our self-custodial wallet as well and give them the keys and the relevant education. And I follow the trust no one ethos in Bitcoin even though you run the company. And yeah, that’s how we’ve been working.
