Topic: How micro payments can help to alleviate global poverty (Read 354 times)

Now, as I said, centralized payment systems are much easier, no matter what we simplify. Giving them a centralized system based on Bitcoin is not really a step forward (not your keys, not your coins). And if we add on top the fact that Bitcoin comes with various fees (and I talk about conversion from/to fiat) and its price is fluctuating a lot... I am not sure it will help them. They don't afford to lose any penny.
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It is a hard question to solve without centralization. I am a fan of decentralizing, but decentralized systems are also really hard to understand and get access to, for many many people in the 1st world, let alone for other countries.

The solution can be bridging both worlds.

Do you know any projects working with this mindset?
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I do. The Rebus Chain https://twitter.com/RebusChain is bringing Defi mainstream, by bridging Defi with Tradfi, bringing new money and new investors into this space.

All businesses can play a role in reducing poverty locally or globally, for example is recycling of waste, we receive raw materials from poor people who take garbage and we produce, if we are successful then we can teach this via the YouTube channel and the world will be able to follow the steps what we do.

I've seen some articles on sending BTC via SMS (using a custodial wallet, unfortunately), but aside from it being a centralized solution, I don't know if it's safe and legit enough. That being said, if people are in poverty, I think the issue isn't Bitcoin transaction fees or that you need a smartphone to comfortably send BTC. The issue is that these people don't have money to spare, and Bitcoin is too volatile for them anyway because they can't risk changes in how much they have when they barely have enough to satisfy basic needs. So the issue of poverty, the economic system, the level of corruption and stuff like that should be addressed (along with access to electricity and the Internet), and then maybe micropayments won't be needed.

I don't think they are time consuming because they are only micro tasks anyway and micro means small but maybe the ones that do the job are slow. Not all micro task are too easy and it is also possible to develop your skills upon doing them but if you think they are not worth for your time then just quit on doing them.

No one is forcing you do them anyway but let's admit it, many people are still relying on them either for temporary or permanently because they don't have a proper job at the moment. These people are still very thankful that micro jobs exist as it can help them to get some money. This is better than doing nothing on their free time.

I can agree with you here. Education is one of the keys to alleviate them from poverty. However, only selected few are given the chance to pursue their education because of their economic status. Micro payments, I think, is not main contributor that can uplift their status in life. it is their education and means of livelihood. Some are just waiting for available decent jobs to come by, else, they are just contented to have those backbreaking jobs with very unfair wage.

And why should the countries of the 1st world impose such a solution?
I know the project you spoke about very well, and this project just solves the problem of both payments and security and convenience.
In order to make "cryptocurrency payments accessible to all", people in Africa need to:
- build data networks
- deploy a network of base stations of mobile operators
- buy full-fledged smartphones for everyone
- to pay for all this...

But why ?
Trust me, they won't like it.

Oh yes - and they will also need to ... Buy cryptocurrency in order to pay with it And why? Why do you think they need it?

I will simplify the answer for you There is a wonderful rule of "five whys". Answer yourself the first question "why do they need it", and then ask your answer the question "why" again and so on 5 times. If you can’t answer logically, then there are no objective reasons!

in areas experiencing poverty problems of course they will experience difficulties in all aspects. it's not just about eating. they even find it difficult to go to school and seek knowledge and insight. because some of them are not even familiar with smart phones. so it is difficult for them to have broad insight, so that creativity is not channeled. sometimes this lack of knowledge is the main obstacle. so free education is very important for areas experiencing poverty.

but always the most surprising of those who live poor is that they actually have a good level of intelligence. it's just that they need to be given space and opportunity. and education to explore their own potential.

obligation for people who can afford is to educate and facilitate them.

creating a platform that helps them is also one of the solutions after education.

"Micro" is a relative term in this context, what might be very small sums in Europe or North America could amount to a substantial portion of a monthly wage in other countries. Some African or Asian countries might earn less than $250 equivalent in their local currency, so if they were able to put together an extra $25 through some sort of dealings then it would add an extra 10% to their salary - a substantial raise. This is why driving down fees for the blockchain network must also be a continuing strategy, they have come a long way from the early days and bech32 made a great step but we should keep pushing them down if we want to raise bitcoin up.

Agree, the smartphone today can be as cheap as $25-50 for a very basic spec but can still work with any wallet provide there is a lite version typical made for transactions only. I think there are programs where manufacturers and telecom even 'sponsor' free smartphones for poor people to help them stay connected with the government to receive critical information. Especially in the rural region where floods, typhoons, volcano eruptions,... natural disasters happen annually.

So we got the hardware problem sort of. Next would be the internet fee which I think is even more challenging than minimum fees and withdrawals. Because for minimum fees and withdrawals fees, we can add some protocol where miners doing 'charity works' or community rigs only add specific txid from users/accounts come from that rural region. Same for exchange, try to get them to make a whitelist for those users/accounts too.

Free internet to maintain 24/7 connection for that rural region, now this is a problem. How about this: We get Elon Musk with his Starlink satellite internet to provide free coverage in that rural region zone, promise a good free press for him and his Starlink program as a return, more boost for him in the crypto world. What do you guys think?

This is definitely true. I've tried doing different microtasks before and they aren't worth my time. They are too time-consuming but the payment is too low despite your skills. Yes, they offer good opportunities but we can't rely our daily necessities on them. They can't also be reliable for a side job because they consume time so it's better look for reliable opportunities where we could earn bigger.

That’s literally how I got in as well. I realized that people do not care about 50 bucks or 100 bucks when they are from western nations and would gladly give that much to someone to do some jobs for them. A weeks worth of job in USA doesn't worth 500 bucks, it worths 1k to 2k, based on who you are and what you do, and plenty of computer engineers or people who earn a good amount in bitcoin world so they are already richer than normal Americans or Europeans.

This allowed me to make 100 bucks or more per week which was low for them, but high for me and ever since those days I am making a good income, definitely much better than other citizens in my own nation, and living a good life, better than I could have imagined.

I don't think that microtasks are alleviating poverty, they likely make it worse. All these microjobs are very low skill tasks with zero career growth and they consume a ton of time. So the people who do them have no opportunity to grow and break out of poverty. Someone relies on miicrotasks for their income will stay poor for the rest of their lives.

A digital wallet that supports or is compatible with lower phone versions. For example, in the past when I wanted to install a crypto wallet application but the condition of the phone was not adequate, in other words, it was not compatible with the device I was using. So here I hope that application developers can create digital wallets that can be accessed by the public there in general with the type of cellphone they hold.

Because today's technology is sophisticated and today's smartphone users don't have too many obstacles if it's only for transactions. The case may be with minimum fees and withdrawals if using an exchange platform. As for the micro income that supports digital transactions among the local community, it is quite difficult to accept. Because what they need is direct money without a third party that can cut the costs of sending and withdrawing.

I support your good intentions, but you need to look at the reality which is the fact that it isn't really feasible right now for such poor people to rely on cryptocurrencies like BTC etc due to the volatility factor, steep learning curve etc.

A better solution would be to help them gain access to more popular centralized, digital payment methods with simple learning curves and negligible fees.

Mobile apps man, mobile apps and nothing more. This is a valid tech that we already have, and people are still acting as if that it's something major that we can't see. Banks are trying to make sure that you can't do this, because the moment you do, it's going to get to a level where it's impossible to come back from. Have apps that allow shops to get paid, and have apps that allow people to pay with it, QR codes and all, that's enough.

I cannot believe that I am writing this for a millionth time. When we reach this level, the whole world would be using the same method, just like paypal but in a grand scale where you can use it not just on online, but in-person purchases as well.

Flip phones may lack the computational capacity to decrypt seeds and execute basic operational security for a mobile wallet. Which could make even a barebones wallet difficult to implement.

I think it would be better to deploy a new minimalist crypto token specifically designed for flip phones. The processing load normally distributed to end user smartphones, could be shifted to the server. Allowing similar functionality on a flip phones reduced hardware specs.

Multiple users time sharing a single smartphone could be another approach.

Smartphone donations to africa might be a project worth pursuing?

Of course, not everyone is poor if we take into account that there are always those who nevertheless have better living conditions and perhaps a better political and economic environment than most others. However, I looked at some recent research and 1/3 of the people in Africa live below the poverty line, and that number increased even more during the pandemic, with the fact that there are even 23 of the poorest countries in the world in Africa where there is extreme poverty.

https://issafrica.org/iss-today/africa-is-losing-the-battle-against-extreme-poverty


I appreciate your enthusiasm, so although I believe that Bitcoin can overcome some problems that the average person faces in everyday life, it can hardly solve the problem of poverty that has its roots somewhere else entirely. I would really like that Bitcoin can be something that will enable these people to live a life worthy of a human being, and not that in the 21st century people die of hunger and diseases for which there are medicines, but there is no will to help these people.

That would come to question whether people in Africa are even capable of being able to do those services. It's not exactly an environment where learning is readily available (afaik), especially since the majority don't have access to the internet, quick look-up indicated that only 22% of the country had access.(and even then, I'd still think it'd require a lot of work to transition them from being able to offer these services). Before giving them actual tools to prove their skills, it'd 100% be better to make them or let them develop it first beforehand.

Exactly that's what I love about Bitcoin. If you see people are getting into Bitcoin because they can actually earn through it in an international arena. In African countries. Even a few dollars earning can get you a decent lifestyle and that's the main reason that in many less developed countries, the proliferation of Bitcoin is very high... Yes I believe we should promote more micro finance transactions

Each time I come across ideas and innovation that support the growth and development of Africa, I am always interested. Africa needs all the help and support because its development process is becoming slower because of external influence and internal corruption. I always tell Africans that they are the people that would develop their continent because no foreigner would genuinely or selflessly contribute to the development of Africa.     

It is not everybody in Africa that is poor, some Africans can comfortably provide their basic needs and still have some extra funds to invest. Also,  we don't need everybody in Africa to come out of poverty before an innovative idea would be introduced. Development can start with few persons in a village and it would spread with time. It would be very easy for Africans to teach and introduce Bitcoin to their fellow villagers or countrymen. So when we have the opportunity to empower like 10 persons in the village that has the population of 10,000, we should not see it as a waste of time and resources. That 10 persons has the power and better opportunity to enlighten, educate and even empower the remaining 1990 persons.   

People in Africa have to be creative if they want to survive, and what is quite normal for people in the US or the EU is a big challenge for them. It's been a few years since I first saw mobile charging stations in Africa, and recently the topic was discussed in a Bitcoin discussion.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.60679643

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It's easy to say, but I think it's much harder to do given the level of political corruption and the attitude of most of the world towards Africa. It is obviously in someone's interest that Africa remains an undeveloped continent for as long as possible, and that it can serve as a dumping ground for various waste (including that from nuclear reactors).

Giving people the ability to be more efficient in payment methods will not solve the problem because people should first be provided with normal living conditions, the right to free primary and secondary school, and fair and democratic elections. A poor man is still poor no matter what payment methods are made available to him, and a more than obvious example is El Salvador, where not much has changed, regardless of the fact that everyone can use Bitcoin in everyday life completely legally.

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Now, as I said, centralized payment systems are much easier, no matter what we simplify. Giving them a centralized system based on Bitcoin is not really a step forward (not your keys, not your coins). And if we add on top the fact that Bitcoin comes with various fees (and I talk about conversion from/to fiat) and its price is fluctuating a lot... I am not sure it will help them. They don't afford to lose any penny.
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It is a hard question to solve without centralization. I am a fan of decentralizing, but decentralized systems are also really hard to understand and get access to, for many many people in the 1st world, let alone for other countries.

The solution can be bridging both worlds.

Do you know any projects working with this mindset?

Two problems
- Do you think somebody that lives off the land in the poorest regions of Africa will suddenly be able to do all these jobs and somehow even thus he has been capable of this he hasn't yet moved to the capital where he could have for sure got a far better pad job than living on the land?
- What makes you think that by simply getting a payment method the market for transition services for example will be able to absorb a few million people?

You probably know what happened to all the freelancer work and how revenues for the easy jobs have gone down the drain, if you have basic skills you're competing with hundreds and thousands for every single 2-5$ job that takes you all day long. No guy that has planted corn for 20 years and had not seen a computer before will be able to suddenly excel in python.


Nope, the first thing is to teach them how to fish, then they go work and earn money to buy a line and hook for themselves as nobody is going to donate 1 million laptops good enough for video editing like that, then they can start on their own. And we're back to square one.

I think this would be an interesting startup idea. Micropayments can really reduce poverty by allowing people to make small purchases with the easy interface of their mobile phones. Also, micropayments will help increase business as it makes transactions easier and enables global trade. Unfair payment structures result in high prices for downloading digital content which we may one day grab ourselves. Micropayments have the potential to change the world more than we can imagine.

You know.... a lot of these people has gone through a lot of hardship in their lives.. and they do not have all these petty issues that some people in 1st countries have. If you are lucky enough to have power in your building, then you must provide a service to the community around you. (obviously at a fee)

They share transport to the nearest town to buy food and to charge their phones, if the Spaza shop (Tuck shop) offers that service and to buy airtime. Some even provide a charging station or kiosk to charge your phone, but it is very expensive ...compared to 1st world countries.

The culture is a lot different to what some people are used to... so sharing your bed or car or household appliances... are not strange to them. (They also have something called "Black tax".... where the one with the job... will support any family member or members as a kind of payback for what was given to them) ....very interesting concept.

In any way.... they make a plan, no matter what their situation is... borrow...beg or steal... they get it done.    Oh, to answer your last question.... yes a lot of 1st world countries are dumping very good phones in 3rd world countries... so the phone quality are getting better and better over time. 

Making payments with Bitcoin is possible on every phone, that has a browser. I have an old Nokia from 2014. It's not a smartphone, but it has a browser and it's theoretically possible to login inside crypto exchange accounts or online wallets, copy and paste a BTC address and click on the "Send BTC" button. Second hand smartphones will become cheaper in the future.
Phones that don't have a browser are pretty much obsolete and out of the market at this point. I don't know about other ways to make ALL phones Bitcoin friendly. Some crypto companies are implementing a "pay via SMS" feature. Perhaps this might help for mass crypto adoption.

While Android development allows one make his tools compatible with (very) old devices, those old devices may not even support the newest Google Play services, hence no need to spend the time.
There are many phone makers who sell pretty cheap devices having not too old Android - there the devs could work by making apps much less resource hungry (!) to acomodate to the cheap devices.
And if we discuss about "dumb-phones", then the apps are flashed with the OS, afaik, hence the devs cannot do anything.

So from what I see, it's not that much the devs can do, even with "proper tools". Still, paying more attention to the resources would be nice.

In my freelancing journey, I have found it to be increasingly difficult to perform tasks without appropriate devices, this would make it a challenge to accommodate users without smartphones, and this might just be a lesser issue.
The current platforms available like upwork, fiverr and the rest could be optimized to accommodate users from 3rd world countries better. And more skilled users should get paid adequately like their counterparts from other regions doing the same work.

Properly equipping the high skilled users with adequate tools, would empower them to create better systems for the less exposed citizens.

- Jay -

That's interesting--are you saying there are places in the community where people can go to charge their phones with solar or gas-powered generators or that individuals own and use them?  Either way, it sounds like the places you're talking about don't have the most reliable power grid, if there's a grid at all.

You described the people you want to help as basically subsistence farmers, living off the land.  If that's true, I doubt they'd be able to do any of those tasks if they haven't had much of an education.  That said, I don't have a clue about what level of education they have; I'm just making an assumption.  I also seriously doubt anyone in a first world country is going to provide steady, reliable work like translation or spell-checking to strangers in a third world country.  That's just reality--especially since there are tools for both of those things readily available on the internet.

And if those farmers in Africa receive a micropayment of bitcoin, is there a good way for them to convert it to their local currency or to spend it?  Most exchanges that deal in fiat have minimum transaction amounts, which might be prohibitive in a scenario like you've proposed.

By the way, don't most people use smartphones nowadays, as opposed to the old-school flip phones?  I've read about MPesa in the context of the gambling problem among youth in Kenya, and from what I gather they're using their phones to place bets.  You can't do that easily with anything other than a smartphone.

I think the problem isn't about the micro payments, but the third party platform that would bring together between the employer and employee. Most people especially third world countries doesn't have good mindset and lack of technology, so they're just think "working" is only related with local job. Even they ever work as a freelancer, there's no guarantee he will work for a long time since the employer usually only give one project. After that he will become an unemployment again.

I use centralized payment methods (Revolut), I use mobile banking, and I use Bitcoin.
Sending money through centralized system is very easy, since the centralized system can always find simple ways to get in touch with its other users, and if a bad transaction happens, they can even undo it, since.. it's centralized. Compared to that, mobile banking is already overly complicated (even card payment is).

Bitcoin is - or should be - on the same level as mobile banking. You know the recipient addresses and you send an amount.
LN should be like credit card.

Now, as I said, centralized payment systems are much easier, no matter what we simplify. Giving them a centralized system based on Bitcoin is not really a step forward (not your keys, not your coins). And if we add on top the fact that Bitcoin comes with various fees (and I talk about conversion from/to fiat) and its price is fluctuating a lot... I am not sure it will help them. They don't afford to lose any penny.

I travel for work a lot and I have worked on contract in 3rd world countries where poverty are very high. In most of these countries and specifically in the more rural areas, people are very poor and they lack the infrastructure and resources to have access to Banking services and/or the Internet.    (Some people even struggle to get electricity and clean water)

Now, most of these people rely on the land to provide them with an income... and they live in a constant "survival" mode.. where they live from hand to mouth.

Now, in Africa I have seen people using cellphones to make digital payments using a centralized payment method, called MPESA ...so even with very limited resources, people are still able to make transactions. (They charge cellphones with small solar panels and/or petrol generators for the community)

We (1st world countries) should find ways to make payments on Bitcoin easier and more user friendly, so that payment on ALL phones can be possible. (not just fancy smart phones)  

We should also find ways for people with those phones to execute tasks that will enable 1st world countries to pay those people with "cheap" micro payments. (Lightning Network) ...example : translation services / typing / spell checking / sorting of data etc...etc.

Let's brainstorm ideas to develop software that will tap into the opportunities that will enable micro payments on a global scale, so that we can pull in a forgotten section of the global economy.  

Do not give them fish... rather provide the hook ...line... sinker... and they will fish for themselves.