OKEx: Banking the Unbanked

If you are reading this, you likely have access to a list of globalizing technologies and services such as a bank account, a smartphone, and higher education. In turn, with such technology and services at your disposal, you have likely achieved things many global citizens dream about. With your bank account and smartphone, think of everything you can do. You probably have the ability to invest, conduct research, and various other actions relevant to securing your future. A sharp reality, though, is that billions of people are without the many luxuries you and I share.

As of today, roughly 2.6 billion people, or 36 percent of the global population, are unbanked; 69 percent of the global population, or 5 million people, do not have access to a smartphone; and 1.2 billion people, or 16 percent of the global population, are without a verified identity. Believe it or not, these people, the ones who lack the many resources we take for granted, have a direct impact on you. Since they are unable to participate in banking and other systems important to stimulating the global economy, the world is unable to reach its full economic potential.

Furthermore, because the unbanked and unidentified are unable to fully achieve financial stability, other entities, typically humanitarian groups and governmental agencies, which are typically backed by tax dollars and donations, must come to their aid. Thus, if we could resolve these issues, we could stimulate the global economy, subsequently driving trillions of dollars into the world and, most importantly, enlighten the lives of billions of people.

Tremendous support to eradicate the addressed inequalities is apparent across democratic nations. Agencies and technologies are constantly developed, adopted, improved, and implemented to better suit the billions of sufferers each day. But one groundbreaking system that may truly improve the world as we know it, a project that may make the unbanked banked as well as generate an identity for each of the 1.2 billion people without one.

We have sought avenues ourselves to combat the prevalent crisis of the unbanked. Recently, we came across an article, How could blockchain support the unbanked?, by Okex, discussing its aim to eliminate the frequency of the unbanked, globally, through a decentralized finance system (DeFi), which includes stablecoins, wallets, lending and more.

The article resonates with us, and is the purpose for which we wish to share it with you all here, on our platform: https://medium.com/okex-blog/okex-defining-blockchain-and-redefining-finance-adcc4fafbc2c