FlexID is building a blockchain-based identity system for those excluded from the banking system due to their lack of identity documents. FlexID’s idea has won it funding from Algorand, a blockchain protocol. The two parties didn’t disclose the size of the investment.
African countries have made strides in promoting financial inclusion over since 2012. More than 60% of adults in sub-Saharan Africa are unbanked, according to World Bank estimates for 2021. In Zimbabwe, for instance, only 30% of the adult population had access to any financial services as of 2014. The number of bank accounts in the country stood at 1.5 million in 2016, according to the press release.
There’s a general conception that increasing access to financial services in a country leads to improvement in people’s economic welfare. And that’s what the Zimbabwean government sought to accomplish when it introduced a financial inclusion scheme from 2016 to 2020. The effort saw the percentage of the Zimbabwean adult population with access to financial services increase to 55% while the number of bank accounts rose to 8.5 million in 2020.
With funding from Algorand, FlexID aims to make its decentralised identity network available in emerging markets where over one billion people are estimated to lack formal identification, the startup said in an announcement.
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