ATLANTA, April 23, 2021 Atlanta-based BitMinutes Inc. (BitMinutes), a financial services technology company leveraging blockchain and pre-paid minutes tokenization to provide financial inclusion to the global consumer, announced today that its token (BMT) has been listed on Uniswap, a leading decentralized crypto exchange that runs on the Ethereum blockchain.

“This is a significant milestone for BitMinutes,” said Tom Meredith, the CEO and Founder of the company. “Uniswap is a worthy alternative to Coinbase. Its automated liquidity protocol is highly efficient, which is one of the reasons we selected the exchange as we expand the number of exchanges through which our tokens are available to the public.”

BMTs can be traded on Uniswap here.

The Uniswap announcement follows BitMinutes’ listing of BMT this winter on the LA Token cryptocurrency exchange. On LA Token, BMTs can be traded in the following pairs:

BMT- BTC
BMT- USDT
BMT-TRX

BitMinutes, which pioneered the patent-pending Atomic Swap blockchain technology, will list its token on other exchanges in the coming months in recognition of the traction it has gained:

• In Africa as the official technology partner of Akoin,
• In Central America, where BitMinutes Partners with Fundación Génesis Empresarial, Initiating a Process that Will Bring Financial Inclusion to Millions of Guatemalans, and
• Globally with GoodDollar

“We anticipate that listing on these exchanges will help us raise awareness of the value proposition we offer the industry,” said Meredith. “This is just the next step for BitMinutes as we march toward our objective of bringing financial services to the unbanked.”

About BitMinutes Inc., the Company

BitMinutes Inc. is a startup fintech company founded in the U.S. Its tokens (BMTs) are exchangeable into universal prepaid airtime minutes. Prepaid minutes are already traded informally as currency within country mobile networks, available to billions of mobile phone owners.

BitMinutes’ tokens also can allow peer-to-peer value transfer to millions of bank and mobile accounts across 70 contracted countries and prepaid airtime top-ups to more than 4 billion mobile accounts in over 120 countries. More importantly, BitMinutes plans to facilitate the expansion of micro-credit lending in communities where lending is rare and too expensive for most individual borrowers. BitMinutes’ ownership and transactional records will establish a new type of consumer credit score for emerging market consumers who currently struggle with limited access to capital and a lack of traditional banking services. In addition, BitMinutes will create payments platforms in countries where it launches to facilitate mobile payments similar to the M-Pesa platform which has achieved success in Kenya, but which has not yet been widely adopted in other countries.

SOURCE BitMinutes

BitMinutes’ Atomic Swap Technology will allow anyone using its electronic wallet “trade ANY supported crypto WITHOUT setting up a crypto account with an exchange.”

“Over the last decade we have perfected this technology, giving us enormous flexibility when exploring opportunities with corporate partners and foreign governments.”

BitMinutes is a financial services technology company leveraging blockchain and pre-paid minutes tokenization to provide financial inclusion to the global consumer. It has applied for a patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for “Systems and Methods Thereof for Exchanging Different Digital Currencies on Different Blockchains”.

Encapsulated under U.S. Application №63/122,215, this intellectual property is the foundation for BitMinutes’ “Atomic Swap Technology,” which enables anyone that uses its electronic wallet “to trade ANY supported crypto WITHOUT setting up a crypto account with an exchange.”

An atomic swap is smart contract technology enabling the exchange of one digital currency for another without using centralized intermediaries, such as exchanges. The core technology is an embedded contract manager allowing two entities to exchange digital currencies of a different type or on different blockchains (e.g., exchanging XLM digital currency for Stellar Ledger digital currency).

The new Akoin token and wallet (www.Akoin.io), involved in a number of projects across Africa, will be using Atomic Swaps so its token can be transferred into multiple currencies, crypto and fiat, all within its own wallet-based ecosystem, with implementation in Q2 2021.

“Over the last decade we have perfected this technology, giving us enormous flexibility when exploring opportunities with corporate partners and foreign governments,” said Tom Meredith, the CEO of BitMinutes.

For more information, contact the BitMinutes technology team through the media contact below.

Other Notes Regarding BitMinutes Technology

BitMinutes combines blockchain and smart contract technologies into an architecture that enables partners and agents in its Trusted Agent Network to offer guaranteed lending, free global value transfer, and prepaid airtime top-ups. As an encrypted token exchangeable into prepaid minutes, BMTs can be used today by users of approximately 4 billion prepaid mobile phones in 130 countries and bank accounts in 70 countries. BitMinutes works with its partners to enable frictionless movement of money and minutes across global financial networks, mobile network carriers, and emerging blockchains.

Meredith, a graduate of the Harvard Business School (specializing in Entrepreneurial Studies) and Stanford University (Mechanical Engineering), added that more new technologies will be in the way.

“Whether it is our work in Africa, Central America, Asia or the United States, we are constantly discovering new ways of doing things that will support our ultimate goal of creating great economic efficiencies in the world economy, especially for those who are less fortunate,” said Meredith.

Media Contact:

Holt Hackney
hackney communications
+1 512–632–0854
email us here

A version of this article was originally published at https://www.einnews.com on December 16, 2020.

BitMinutes continues to work with Fundación Génesis Empresarial, the largest microfinance institution in Guatemala, to significantly expand financial inclusion in Guatemala by offering highly affordable digital financial services.

Together, the two companies will build on Genesis’ network of retail locations to form the Guatemalan division of the Trusted Agent Network to provide Guatemalans with free remittances (or wire transfers) from the United States, as well as microloans in the near future.

Consumers can use the following link to create an account and make remittances:

https://my.tanagent.com/guatemala/

The partnership will also offer pre-paid phone time top ups using the BitMinutes token (BMT), which can be purchased and sent to any mobile phone, notably from any U.S. BitMinute wallet to any phone in Guatemala.

While BitMinutes brings its proven technology to the partnership, Fundación Génesis Empresarial has Pronet, S.A. (AKISI) and its 50,000 locations in Guatemala. Customers of TAN-LA will ultimately be able to pick up their remittances at these locations.

Key to the partnership is the fact that the two companies have completed the integration of their respective platforms, making for a seamless transfer from the BitMinutes wallet to the AKISI wallet.

“Our mission with BitMinutes has always been to help the unbanked climb out of their economic circumstance and even create their own business and become an entrepreneur,” said Tom Meredith, the CEO and founder of BitMinutes. ‘We have already started fulfilling that mission in Nigeria, where we have a have a TAN network that spans more than 1,300 TAN agents, serving more than 7,000 Nigerians. We are working next on offering microloans there. In Guatemala, our partnership with FGE will accelerate our microloan program.”

FGE CEO said the timing of the service is perfect. “With this proven and reliable technology, we will be able to make a tremendous difference in the lives of millions of Guatemalans,” said FGE CEO.

About BitMinutes Inc., the Company

BitMinutes Inc. is a startup fintech company, founded in the U.S. BitMinutes tokens (BMTs) are exchangeable into universal prepaid airtime minutes. Prepaid minutes are already traded informally as currency within country mobile networks, available to billions of mobile phone owners. BitMinutes’ tokens also allow peer-to-peer value transfer to millions of bank and mobile accounts across 70 contracted countries and prepaid airtime top-ups to over 4 billion mobile accounts in over 120 countries. More importantly, BitMinutes plans to facilitate the expansion of micro-credit lending in communities where lending is rare and too expensive for most individual borrowers.

View original content: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bitminutes-partners-with-fundacion-genesis-empresarial-initiating-a-process-that-will-bring-financial-inclusion-to-millions-of-guatemalans-301149321.html

World-famous artist Akon partners with BitMinutes to push forward the utility of Akoin | CryptoSlate

Akoin teams up with BitMinutes to Monetize the Prepaid Minute

Akon recent launched the Akoin, his cryptocurrency, on the Stellar network. Akoin is positioned as the foundation of the “Akoin Ecosystem,” a platform that offers “experiences and opportunities for youth entrepreneurs by allowing consumers to buy, hold, and spend cryptocurrency right from their smartphone through a suite of blockchain-powered apps.”

BitMinutes is the first of those platform apps, and could be the most powerful as it brings a cash-in, cash-out option for prepaid mobile phone minutes. Currently minutes are trapped within each mobile operator’s ecosystem, and it is a one-way transaction. Once bought, prepaid airtime cannot be converted back into cash. BitMinutes breaks the prepaid minute out of both constraints.

This is such a productive application because millions of people across Africa have limited or no access to financial institutions; they have been relying on prepaid mobile phone minutes to use as a form of currency to settle peer-to-peer debts, pay bills and buy goods.

By working together, Akoin and BitMinutes plan to tackle this issue and enable users to transact using a financial model they are familiar with, according to Lynn Liss, COO at Akoin.

Liss said:

“Our relationship with BitMinutes provides the cornerstone for how we achieve our shared vision for bringing financial inclusion to rising economies such as Africa; starting with prepaid minutes as a medium of exchange was a clear pathway for us given the store of value people in Africa already recognize there, and is the first step in bringing more users into our blockchain-based economy we’re developing at Akoin.”

BitMinutes will offer Akoin holders free money transfers to 1.2 billion accounts across Africa and free mobile top-up for four billion mobile phones. The firm will also provide access to prepaid airtime capabilities and micro-lending and “cash in/out services.”

Tom Meredith, CEO at BitMinutes, explained:

“The BitMinutes application is not only practical, but intuitive for these regions… Leveraging this growing store of value already found in prepaid minutes, BitMinutes expanded services also include micro-lending where prepaid minutes serve as collateral. Trusted Area Network (TAN) agents are highly vetted and become BitMinutes micro-lending agents, in addition to providing cash in and cash out services to those using the platform.”

Akoin calls partnership apps like BitMinutes “decentralized applications” or dApps. This dApp is expected to launch onto the Stellar-powered blockchain in the second quarter of 2020, enabling Akoin holders to swap a portion of their tokens into BitMinutes, to use as airtime or exchange with other individuals or local businesses for goods and services.

BitMinutes Inc. (BitMinutes), a financial services technology company leveraging blockchain and pre-paid minutes tokenization to bring financial inclusion to the global consumer in less developed communities, announced today a country-specific BitMinute (BMT) in Guatemala. The Guatemala-BMT (BGTQ) will be pegged in value one-to-one to the Guatemala Quetzal (GTQ) to encourage easy understanding and widespread use by Guatemalans.

Approximately $10 billion is remitted from the U.S. to Guatemala each year, according to the World Bank, so there is a lot of potential to convert that flow of money into BGTQ transactions.

Beginning in April, BitMinutes will enable US residents, initially in four states, to purchase BGTQs and transfer them, at no cost, to friends and family in Guatemala. BGTQs are mobile-enabled, and can be sent freely around Guatemala to other recipients using mobile-phone-based eWallets (mobile wallets). BGTQ users will use them to top-up their pre-paid phones, or go to participating agents to convert BGTQs into Quetzals.

“BGTQs are pre-paid mobile phone minutes backing a digital stable coin token for Guatemala’s 18 million residents,” said BitMinutes CEO Tom Meredith. “Fixing the value of one BGTQ to one Quetzal allows immediate understanding and acceptance of the BGTQ digital token, unlike other digital tokens, which are volatile and have little use for the average consumer. Everyone in Guatemala will be able to use BGTQs on their phones. If a phone is lost, the BGTQs will be secure in the Amazon cloud maintained by BitMinutes. They will be easily used and can never be lost.
“This is true ‘free money transfer.’ There is no transaction fee to buy BGTQs, transfer them to Guatemala, send them within Guatemala and/or convert them to cash at participating agent locations.”

Meredith notes that approximately half the Guatemalan population is unbanked. They don’t own any financial product, yet will approach financial institutions to make simple transactions, such as paying utility bills or receiving remittances, according to The Dialogue.

“The less expensive we can make it for unbanked Guatemalans to receive financial help from friends and family in the United States, the more money they will have to improve their life, perhaps even start a business,” said Meredith. “You can’t get any less expensive than free.”

Initially, U. S. residents of Georgia, New York, Illinois and New Jersey will be able to visit www.BitMinutes.com or www.P2PCash.com online. It is expected that BitMinutes will be able to provide this service nationally by mid-year 2020, according to Meredith.

Meredith added that the Guatemala division of the joint venture, called BitMinutes Guatemala, plans to introduce the ability to make micro loans and provide a payments platform in Guatemala, which is designed to mirror the success that M-Pesa has had in Kenya.

Easy Card and Supermarket of Crypto: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Doge, Shiba

BitMinutes CEO Tom Meredith noted that the timing of the listing is, well, timely given recent corporate developments.

“For example, BitMinutes now has more than 5,000 customers in Nigeria, where the unbanked are using their BitMinutes to top up phones and as a unit of value for financial transactions, like folks use Venmo. BitMinutes began the initiative more than six months ago,” reported Meredith. He added that announcements involving other countries in Africa are imminent.

One of those initiatives is the involvement of BitMinutes in Akoin, a token project associated with performer and entrepreneurial businessman Akon.

Akoin

About BitMinutes, the Company

BitMinutes is a startup fintech company, founded in the U.S. Its token, the BitMinute (BMT), is exchangeable into universal prepaid airtime minutes. Prepaid minutes are already traded informally as currency within country mobile networks, available to billions of mobile phone owners.

BitMinutes’ tokens also allow peer-to-peer value transfer to over 1.2 billion bank accounts and prepaid airtime top-ups to over 4 billion mobile accounts in over 200 countries. More importantly, BitMinutes facilitate the expansion of micro-credit lending in communities where lending is rare and too expensive for most individual borrowers. BitMinutes’ ownership and transactional records will establish a new type of consumer credit score for emerging market consumers who currently struggle with limited access to capital and a lack of traditional banking services.

BitMinutes | Home

Agent Networks at the Last Mile

“Most digital financial services users around the world live in cash-based societies, and they require a cheap and easy way to switch between the worlds of cash and digital currency…global evidence shows that emerging agent network business models are improving agent viability in remote areas home to many of the world’s poor, financially excluded populations,” writes Emilio Hernandez in his introduction to the report.

This is exactly where BitMinutes aims to add value, with its Trusted Agent Network (TAN Network.) This network is built on blockchain tokenization and the power of the cloud to deliver all digital financial services via smart phone. No fancy bricks-and-mortar financial establishments, the traditional Last Mile for delivering financial services, can make a go of it in less populated areas. The “bricks-and-mortar” in the TAN Network are the local merchants who already have a strong presence (and a high level of trust) in remote communities.

The CGAP report called these agents “CICO Agents” for “cash in, cash out.” This captures the exact need: How do locals trade globally in tokens, yet cash out locally to trade in fiat currency?

The report goes on to boil the Last Mile solution to six core principles:

6 Principles for Inclusive Agent Networks

• Enable rural CICO agents to generate more revenue streams.
• Make CICO agents more accessible to rural customers, as defined by the local context.
• Expand the range of people that can serve as CICO agents.
• Identify and manage consumer protection and other risks posed by rural agents without stopping innovation.
• Develop a data-driven strategy to close the gender gap in CICO access and use.
• Expand public and private partnerships that share CICO agent networks.

All of these, with the possible exception of point six (for now), are found as core principles of the TAN Agent program powered by BitMinutes as their medium of exchange. Money transfers, savings programs, micro-loans all feature in the growing portfolio of services offered by our “corner banker” TAN Agents.

The link to the full report is here:

The summarizing infographic is here.

Plans call for LATOKEN to offer the BMT in an Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) through the end of October. The BMT will be priced at a 20 percent discount off the official listing price on LATOKEN through the end of September. The full listing goes live at the end of October.

If your country is live on LATOKEN, you can find the BMT landing page here.

BitMinutes CEO Tom Meredith noted that the timing of the listing is perfect, given recent corporate developments.

“For example, BitMinutes now has more than 5,000 customers in Nigeria, where the unbanked are using their BitMinutes to top up phones and as a unit of value for payments, much as Venmo works. BitMinutes began the initiative more than six months ago,” reported Meredith, who is pleased with the progress.

He added that announcements involving other countries in Africa are imminent.
That growth is being fueled by another recent development involving an announced strategic partnership with Galaxia International, a remittance service operating in New York and New Jersey, to provide free money transfer online to 70 countries, including Nigeria. BitMinutes’ underlying blockchain technology facilitates the currency transfer through P2PCash.com.
“Everything is coming together,” said Meredith. “Listing on LATOKEN, with its attendant IEO, is the next logical step. It will be a catalyst for a number of deals in the pipeline.”
About LATOKEN
Founded in Russia, LATOKEN is not just a crypto exchange but also a decentralized multi-asset trading platform. The exchange allows easy trading in all major coins as well as many new emerging coins. It’s to stress here LATOKEN portal is based on DAG technology that assures super-fast trading in just seconds. Moreover, the exchange is extremely particular about security and has deployed advanced measures like encryption key, DDOS protection, 2FA to ensure a safe trading environ for users. The exchange also stores 99.5 percent of users’ funds in a cold wallet to prevent hacking.
About BitMinutes Technology
BitMinutes technology harnesses the decentralized power of the blockchain by leveraging the digital ledger behind user data for making purchases, transferring money, generating loans and using airtime minutes. Selling and lending BitMinutes-based micro-loans will create a business opportunity for entrepreneurs globally. BitMinutes turns the corner retailer into the corner banker, profitably delivering banking services to the smallest of villages and towns worldwide.

About BitMinutes, the Company
BitMinutes is a startup fintech company, founded in the U.S. Its token, the BMT, is exchangeable into universal prepaid airtime minutes. Prepaid minutes are already traded informally as currency within country mobile networks, available to billions of mobile phone owners.
BitMinutes’ tokens also allow peer-to-peer value transfer to over 1.2 billion bank and mobile accounts across over 70 contracted countries and prepaid airtime top-ups to over 4 billion mobile accounts in over 120 countries. More importantly, BitMinutes plans to facilitate the expansion of micro-credit lending in communities where lending is rare and too expensive for most individual borrowers. BitMinutes’ ownership and transactional records will establish a new type of consumer credit score for emerging market consumers who currently struggle with limited access to capital and a lack of traditional banking services.

Africa is fast adopting mobile technologies, which puts a lot of traditional merchant services at their fingertips just as quickly as mobile commerce solutions are being rolled out globally.

Africa's untapped potential as an ecommerce market

Here is why:

• 41% of 1.2 billion Africans is under the age of 15. All these young people will be comfortable with trial and adoption of new tech tools.
• 444 million Africans have a mobile/smartphone, in part because landline telecom infrastructure is still not widespread or reliable. Business and consumers are moving to digital and wireless phone solutions because they need to, and the price is affordable enough drive high adoption.
• Mobile wallets are becoming an accepted commerce and payments tool. Kenya reached mass adoption early because of the unique market dominance of one mobile operator, but other countries are fast catching up. mWallets are gaining trust, and therefore are providing a convenient tool for electronic payments for services.

As the article from Mobile Payments Today (linked above) asserts:

The use of such e-wallets has made it much easier for locals and non-locals alike to do business in Africa. It is much cheaper to set up an online shop than a traditional version, and in doing so merchants can now bring goods and services within reach of people in remote and previously under-served areas. This opportunity has expanded with improved logistics, which are another key feature of the new African markets.

BitMinutes focuses on one key area of friction that only Kenya has not had as a real barrier to more rapid eWallet service development: The interoperability of wallets between mobile operators. The electronic currency residing within each wallet is usuallty trapped within each operator’s ecosystem. Making the “currency” exchangeable between those eco-systems is critical. The BitMinute as a universal prepaid airtime minute that can be transferred to any mobile phone eliminates that friction and opens up even more opportunity for digital banking and commerce to explode across Africa.

Then the rest of the world will flock to Africa to find the digital tools that will drive commerce through the rest of the 21st Century!

Galaxia International Services, Inc. and P2P Cash Technology, Inc. have forged a financial services partnership that combines P2P Cash’s blockchain technology (which also powers BitMinutes’ products and services) with Galaxia’s financial services to offer residents of the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area free digital international money transfer and other financial services.

Galaxia, a money transfer, check cashing and currency exchange business that has been operating in the Greater New York area since 2000, can now offer its clients online and mobile services as a complement to its six brick-and-mortar retail locations.

“The future of money transfer is clearly online,” said Galaxia International CEO, Ali El Mobayed. “We need to take the initiative to add digital services to our mix of financial services to keep ahead of our competition. Slower moving competitors like the biggest money transfer companies are also moving in this direction, and we need to stay ahead of them, in particular.”

The new relationship has adapted the P2P Cash cloud and blockchain-based software solution to provide Galaxia with a next-generation offering. The P2P Cash solution is built on the technology behind the BitMinute, a digital utility token tied to prepaid airtime minutes.

“Prepaid airtime minutes are the future model for universal value exchange,” said P2P Cash CEO Tom Meredith. “They are already exchanged for goods and services within countries, and now BitMinutes (http://www.bitminutes.com/) makes these units of prepaid airtime shareable across borders, between two people with mobile wallets on their phones as well as through the Trusted Agent Network (TAN). This will massively drive down the cost of moving value globally.”

The money transfer business is also a fragmented business, with the top two competitors owning only about 15% of the $700 billion remittance market. Recognizing that the consumer is rapidly adopting digital services tapped via online and phone apps, new competitors in the money transfer industry are not opening physical retail locations. They are instead leveraging new financial technology like blockchain and tokenization to offer inexpensive remittances online.

“The vast majority of immigrants with family back in their home countries are still using traditional retail locations to conduct money transfers, but the move to use online websites and mobile phone apps is growing rapidly,” said Meredith.

“Opening a lot of new physical locations is not the future of our business,” added El Mobayed. “Our working customers who are sending money home are getting younger, and they are all savvy about digital financial services delivered and accessed through their phones. This is the future.”

Galaxia customers will access their new online money transfer service through the P2PCash.com website or mobile app.

About P2P Cash

P2P Cash Technology, Inc. is a registered financial services company that offers free money transfer through its online portal at www.p2pcash.com and its mobile application. The company works with partners to create and propagate global banking standards to enable 3 billion consumers worldwide to access low cost financial services. Through technology innovation P2P Cash provides a highly secure, real-time solution to deliver cash transfers and remittance payments to developing countries.

P2P Cash is an authorized agent of Galaxia International in New York and New Jersey. Galaxia International is licensed as a Money Transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services and the New Jersey Department of Banking, and which is registered with FinCEN.

About Galaxia International

Galaxia International is a Money Transfer Company, Check cashing and Currency Exchange business that has been serving the New York-New Jersey Metropolitan Area since 2000. Galaxia provides a secure service to send money to friends and family worldwide. Money sent gets to where it’s needed quickly. Galaxia’s diversity of locations gives our clients choice and convenience, offering extended hours so you can send money at a time that’s convenient to you. And now, through this partnership with P2P Cash, leveraging the BitMinutes blockchain and token technology, Galaxia also offers digital money transfer to its clients, and in the near future plans to add other financial services like remote phone top-up and purchase of BitMinutes prepaid airtime minutes, which can be sent to any mobile phone on the planet.