MIAMI–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Netki and AlphaPoint formally announced today at Bitcoin 2022 their joint partnership and readiness to welcome nations worldwide to join El Salvador as pioneers in the future of financial inclusion by working together to implement macroscale cryptocurrency onboarding projects.
As the leading companies in developing and operating national scale crypto platforms, only Netki and AlphaPoint have the requisite experience to build secure, reliable solutions for onboarding and operating a nation’s crypto initiative. As demonstrated with El Salvador’s Chivo Wallet, both companies proved instrumental in the successful implementation of the Bitcoin bill and securely providing financial tools to over 70% of the country’s unbanked population.
Due to overwhelming demand after the initial launch, Chivo realized they needed to hire seasoned players in the cryptocurrency space to keep their app working and their citizens safe. They chose Netki and AlphaPoint because of their strong expertise in scaling, security and fraud prevention.
With the help of digital identity provider Netki, over 4 million users were onboarded to Chivo in a record-breaking 45 days using the company’s flagship Know Your Customer (KYC)/Anti-Money Laundering (AML) product, OnboardID. In addition to being fast, easy, and intuitive, OnboardID has saved Netki clients more than 10 times in prevented fraud than clients have invested in the product.
“Netki and AlphaPoint have made history as the first two companies in the world to successfully execute a nationwide bitcoin adoption platform. Netki’s scalability and fraud prevention were key factors in our success in working together,” stated Igor Telyatnikov, Co-Founder and CEO of AlphaPoint.
AlphaPoint provided the frontend and backend infrastructure powering Chivo, including integrating the entire ecosystem of the wallet through a mobile application, mobile point-of-sale processing, merchant website portal, call-center support software, and administrative console. AlphaPoint also improved the Lightning integration for nearly instantaneous low-fee Bitcoin transactions via QR and Lightning addresses, even allowing for the sending of a single satoshi (under a penny).
“Understanding user experience/flows, having seasoned technical teams who are experts in security, and being prepared in advance to make it scalable are the keys to making Bitcoin adoption work,” said Netki CEO Justin Newton. “We partnered with AlphaPoint because they have created the only platform you can run your country’s economy on.”
The newly created, joint platform has a high degree of flexibility, allowing countries to tailor the services and experiences that are appropriate for their environment, including being able to add functionality supporting Lightning Network, CDBCs and other crypto currencies, as well as add-on services such as lending and savings. This allows the platform to be customized to local needs and also expand over time as the populace adopts one set of services, revealing the next set of needs.
The numerous benefits to the nation of El Salvador and its citizens are already coming to fruition – lower remittance fees, ability to make online digital payments, and other forms of financial inclusion for their citizens – and other countries who are exploring similar opportunities are keen to realize these and other benefits, including increases in tourism, foreign real estate investment, foreign business investment, and access to alternative finance such as the Bitcoin Bond.
Developing nations see the additional benefits of being perceived internally and externally as promoting innovation, and the impact of that perception on foreign company creation and job opportunity. Countries that are first to adopt bitcoin as legal tender will have the opportunity to become innovation hubs for the next technology leap forward in Web3.
Launching these ambitious projects, however, comes with numerous potential risks around adoption, acceptance by the community, scalability, security and fraud. By choosing the right partners, countries can effectively mitigate these risks and increase the chance that the country’s investment will bear fruit more quickly.
Netki and AlphaPoint’s experience in supporting the only successful project of this kind demonstrates that they can create applications and user flows that are intuitive to both power users, as well as end users who are having their very first experiences with financial applications. By utilizing intuitive design as well as natural native language coaching and instructions, even users new to financial services can easily use and benefit from the application.
The combined platform can easily handle the scale required as broader adoption is achieved worldwide. The Chivo application today easily manages many more active users than the entire banking sector in El Salvador, and can easily manage more growth, supported by a high degree of automation, where computerized tools replace processes where other platforms require manual intervention by operators or support personnel. This dramatically lowers the staffing costs normally required to support the platform.
“We expect this is the first of many countries that will get involved. Other government officials have already reached out to us and expressed their interest in Bitcoin as a way to promote financial inclusion and we are ready to make that happen,” Newton said.
With dozens of nations exploring how bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can enhance their national profile, increase financial inclusion, and invite innovation into their economies, conversations are already underway with other governments hoping to replicate and expand upon El Salvador’s success. In order to minimize unnecessary costs, risks and negative user experiences, Netki and AlphaPoint encourage countries to leverage their unique experience to avoid missteps and dramatically accelerate the timeline to a successful implementation, allowing countries to more quickly realize the benefits of adopting cryptocurrency.
