Tunisia to Transfer its National Currency onto Blockchain

29.12.2015

Tunisia will become the world’s first country to operate its national currency via blockchain. The blockchain in question, however, is an advanced version of the bitcoin’s one developed by Monetas.

With population of about 11 million, Tunisia has more than 3 million people unbanked. However, 600,000 of them using eDinar, a digital version of the national currency via La Post Tunisienne (The Tunisian Post), a state-owned public company being the only non-baking entity entitled to collect savings. The Tunisian Post has been providing accounts servicing since 1918, while the national savings bank was established as early as in 1956.

The platform developed for the Tunisian Post employs blockchain to enable various transactions across the globe.

“We are delighted to be working in partnership with the Tunisian Government, National Post, and DigitUs to increase financial inclusion with an open mobile money platform that is able to operate across mobile networks. This is an important first step towards a freer and more prosperous world,” Johann Gevers, Founder and CEO at Monetas, stated.

“La Poste is a very important and trusted institution and is at the heart of financial inclusion efforts in Tunisia. At La Poste we are on a transformation journey to modernize our services with innovative technologies and power the digital economy. Digital, Mobile, and Internet, are all key components in this transformation. Monetas and Digitus help us to bring these ingredients to the table” M. Moez Chakchouk, CEO at La Poste Tunisienne, declared.

Monetas, however, is not going to stop at Tunisia.

“Powering the financial inclusion of 2.5 billion unbanked people worldwide will begin in Africa, we will then go onto expand throughout Latin America, followed by South East Asia,” Gevers stated in an interview.

In Tunisia, Monetas operates alongside with the Post, and local startup dubbed DigitUs. The existing 600,000 eDinar users will have their accounts and services to the new technology as soon as due diligence has been completed.

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