Boom, an integrated e-commerce marketplace that will allow anyone to buy and sell products online without a bank account, has been unveiled in Lagos, Thursday.
Owners of the new e-commerce platform said it is a digital ecosystem that comprises different segments such as a Boom Marketplace where consumers discover products and services from merchants, the Boom Wallet for payments, and Boom Messaging for communication.
During a virtual presentation, Peter Adekeye Founder, Boom, said consumers can shop online without needing a bank account or credit/debit cards.
To shop, simply top up your Boom wallet with Multicoins, which can be purchased over-the-counter with cash at certified Multicoin resellers worldwide.
Quoting the World Bank, Adekeye said 1 billion women and 700 million men have no bank account and are referred to as the unbanked.
“These people have never shopped online and neither have they ever been able to offer their goods and services for sale on the Internet.”
Estimated at over 40 million, Nigeria’s unbanked adult population who are mostly in the hard-to-reach rural communities are expected to have access to Boom.
Adekeye said whether you’re in Lagos Abuja, Kano, you know in most states in Puerto Rico, Canada, everybody can now essentially connect to the global financial digital ecosystem, without having a bank account, without a website without needing to have payment processing tools, or an inventory management platform of the bank.
All of these things are very complex and complicated. And that’s why we have essentially invented Boom, you know, this ecosystem that allows everybody to connect to it, to buy and sell,l and gets paid for everything. Without any fees whatsoever, to have financial Inclusion for everybody,” he said.
Cryptocurrency
According to Adekeye, Multicoin, a cryptocurrency with the symbol, ‘MTCN’, is the medium of exchange for all transactions on Boom.
He explained that any user will need to top up their Boom wallets with Multicoins to make purchases and merchants that receive Multicoins for payments, can instantly convert them into euros, their local currencies, and very soon, into Central Bank Digital Currencies(CBDC) too.
He said it comes with its own built-in secure wallet that simplifies the sending and receiving of Multicoins and no fees of any kind on all transactions.
Further, he said, the Multicoin is an ERC-20 token that resides within the Ethereum blockchain. Accordingly, it is secured by Ethereum’s Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism.
Onboarding on Boom
Boom will be available in the next coming weeks on Play Store and Apple Store. All that is needed for any user to download Boom and sign up (KYC)
Adekeye said this is to ensure compliance with EU regulations and eliminates spam, scam, and online abuse.
“Get KYC, everybody is verified there’s no anonymity, no phone, no, no scam. We know everybody about the first thing and the last names to avoid spam. Once we get the KYC then you essentially go on and create a virtual profile.”
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