Climateer Investing: "what happens if the Internet goes dark and we can’t use our phones or cards?"

Sunday, March 13, 2022

"what happens if the Internet goes dark and we can’t use our phones or cards?"

A story hoisted from the link-vault that may be more pertinent today than the day it was written.

From Bloomberg via Malaysia's The Star, March 29, 2021:

Billionaire-backed Swedish startup may have digital cash fix

A Swedish fintech backed by billionaire Mohammed Al Amoudi says it’s found a solution to one of the biggest nightmares of an increasingly cashless world: what happens if the Internet goes dark and we can’t use our phones or cards?
Crunchfish AB, in which Al Amoudi holds 17% through investment unit Midroc, is developing software for mobile phones that lets consumers pay merchants in real time, offline and in any currency, including central bank digital currency and bitcoin.

In doing so, the startup may have figured out how to help societies function without cash, even “if the lights go out, ” which Sweden’s central bank Governor Stefan Ingves once mused would require a return to bank notes and coins.

Crunchfish is running a pilot project with Swish, Sweden’s biggest payment services provider. If successful, it could be used for cross-border transactions and help lay the foundation for an e-krona, for which the Riksbank is running its own pilot project. It works like a checkbook: consumers place money into a special account that can be tapped to make payments if networks are down. Once back online, payments are registered and users can top up their accounts.

The company has the potential to become another Klarna Bank AB, now Europe’s most valuable startup, Goran Linder, chief executive officer of Midroc in Sweden, said in an interview. Crunchfish now has a market value of US$112mil (RM464.41mil)....

....MUCH MORE