Bitcoin Forum

How do we expand access to bitcoin to people living in developing nations?

This access could be through income opportunities or loans or merely access to wallets and apps needed to access exchanges.

Is there any work going on in this area yet? If so, who are the players?

Bitcoin remittance & FDI in small scale industries without govt interference are 2 great opportunities to penetrate the developing nations...

I've read about a few projects, of the top of my head I remember:

https://www.bitpesa.co/

https://www.kipochi.com/

And I believe Stellar is also involved in some related projects.

Cheap cell phones work with bitcoin, and even the cheapest of computers can access an online bitcoin wallet. blockchain.info wallets would probably make accessing bitcoin much easier, since they don't have to download a 40 gb blockchain... I dont think that bitcoin could be used well in developing countries, hard to use bitcoin if you dont have places to spend it or obtain it, or if you are poor I doubt you would care about this.

Here:

BitX was founded in February 2013 and is headquartered in Singapore, with a development team in Cape Town and a satellite office in Palo Alto. We are currently also present in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Africa, Namibia, Kenya and Nigeria.

https://bitx.co/about


Prepaid phones everywhere with: https://www.piiko.com/

I wouldn't consider Singapore, South Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia, the US or the Philippines developing nations. And just because they have offices there doesn't mean they enable the poor to access bitcoin. Do you have any information on how Bitx is enabling the poor?

...

I would really like to see Peru get into Bitcoin, apparently Argentina is already pretty into it.

Maybe a "hawala" type of service.  Pay some BTC "here", and have your people "there" take local currency.  I am guessing that would be a terrific service!  Might run afoul of money-laundering laws though...    :(

Here: http://www.coindesk.com/bitx-targets-developing-countries-global-expansion-plan/

If we are doing everything from the internet, I don't think it will work to reach out to them. Most poor countries doesn't even have access to these basic amenities. It should involve people actually going there. I think for now, more important is the education and telling what bitcoin is and in terms of adopting it as a currency. These take time. But nothing to worry about, once it goes global eventually it will become a trend and things will pick up by itself.

If Bitcoin is superior, it should suceed. Talking about it to people from developping countries should help. Having Bitcoin associations spreading the good news would help too.

In your opinion, what is a developing country? {Most of these places have a mix between 1st world and 3rd world development} so it's still applicable to them.
There are inner city {more developed areas} and rural areas, where most people live in a 3rd world environment.

Bitpesa are taking huge strides in bringing mobile payment to everyone.

The 2 most important things to help them, would be to help create infrastructure for cheap internet access {Google balloons} and helping more merchants in small shops to accept bitcoins as a payment method.