NewTech Friday: Unbanked – a liberating mix of legacy financial technology and blockchain
Ian Kane is the Co-Founder and CEO of Unbanked, a global fintech platform built on blockchain. Predicated on the ethos that people should be in control of their own money, Unbanked connects traditional enterprise, fintech, and banking systems with blockchain infrastructure.
What led to the creation of Unbanked?
At Unbanked, we believe financial access and control is a fundamental human right. New technologies like blockchain are a better, faster, and cheaper protocol to transact on, and mobile phones have enabled anyone to set up a digital wallet store or transact in digital currencies like Bitcoin or the Digital Dollar. However, no one has made the blockchain protocol interact seamlessly with the financial products that people already understand like bank accounts and debit cards. That’s where we saw an opportunity.
Unbanked empowers residents all over the world to get a bank account on their mobile phone that enables them to store funds in cash or instantly convert them to digital currencies to send anywhere. We also provide debit cards (physical and virtual) that give people the ability to spend the value of their cash or digital currency, wherever major debit cards are accepted. A merchant doesn’t need to accept digital currency like Bitcoin in order for the cardholder to be able to spend it. Most importantly, they can do it all from the palm of their hand.
By mixing legacy financial products with new technology we can significantly reduce cost while democratizing access for everyone - while still adhering to all local regulations.
We are a financial institution that provides transformative products and services. For consumers, we offer FDIC-insured bank accounts for residents in over 150 different countries - allowing them to easily get into digital currencies or just safely hold cash. We offer both virtual and physical debit cards for residents in the United States, as well as the ability to sync their cards with Apple, Google, or Samsung pay. You can sign up for a card in 5 minutes and begin using the virtual card while we mail you the physical card. We also offer a robust rewards program for cardholders if they choose to participate. Cardholders are also able to deposit cash to the card immediately and get into digital currency at a number of major US retailers like Walmart, CVS, and others - giving them a 24/7 in-person banking experience.
We also don’t believe in building a walled garden, so we white-label our entire product suite for other companies who want to use our platform, but customize it based on brand identity or the currency being used. This isn’t a zero-sum game and financial inclusion means empowering as many organizations as possible to help accelerate access.
What's coming next for Unbanked?
Great question! I can’t reveal too much, but happy to share some items. We are going to expand our suite of decentralized financial products - such as a mobile application with self-custodial key management. We also plan to expand our card programs for residents of the UK, EEA, and LATAM. Soon after we will expand to APAC and EMEA. Our goal is to be live in most of these markets starting next quarter.
I firmly believe that we have something really special here at Unbanked that can significantly improve the lives of millions of people across the globe. We are operating in a trillion-dollar market and can tackle use cases from global payment remittance to simple on and off-ramps for customers. Best of all, we’re only getting started!
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