Today we’re going to take a look at something called MenaPay. So for those wonder MENA stands for Middle East and North Africa. Since this is their target client base, you can see where the name comes from.
MenPay is a Dubai based project that is focusing on the “unbanked” population in this region. Countries such as the UAE, have large ex pat communities. A lot of these foreign workers send money back home to support their families. This can be a pretty difficult process and also quite expensive. Wire transfers are the norm as most people do not have a traditional bank account.
As you may know by now, I like projects that attempt to bring cryptocurrency to the masses and implement mass adoption.
MenaPay states:
MenaPay replaces traditional payment methods with a blockchain-based, fully backed cryptocurrency to provide a secure and transparent payment gateway enabling transactions for every aspect of daily life.
The population of their target area is over 420 million people with a massive 86% of this unable to access traditional banking methods.
Yet this region accounts for a large proportion of the world economy, larger than India and Russia combined. But huge amounts of savings are held in Gold and Cash. People need safer ways to hold wealth, invest and move money freely between countries.
Summary
MenaPay is the first, fully backed blockchain-based payment gateway in the Middle East and Africa.
MenaPay replaces traditional payment methods with a blockchain-based fully backed cryptocurrency. This provides a secure and transparent payment gateway to enable transactions for every aspect of daily life.
The MenaPay project was started in November 2017 to serve the MENA Region, across 18 countries, as their primary payment method.
MenaPay will distribute 75% of total revenue and profit amongst holders of MenaPay.
It is creating a new standard in the crypto industry, beyond the regular incentives for users and investors.
Problem they are attempting to solve
There are 2 main primary things we need to consider when talking about the Mena project and the problems they are addressing.
First off, regular banking tools are largely unused in the Middle East and Africa Region due to the conservative practice of Islam and the poor banking system. The region also has a very fragmented structure with multiple currencies.
Solutions
MenaPay brings a 100% Islamic, non-bank digital solution, using blockchain to create a single currency to be used in everyday and cross-border transactions.
Cryptocurrencies cannot easily be used in daily life transactions because of their price fluctuations and cash-out concerns and manipulation.
MenaPay will address this by utilising its own token, MenaCash. which is 100% backed by USDs, will be used as the currency for transactions under the MenaPay platform.
MenaCash will be pegged to the US Dollar, meaning 1 MenaCash will always be equal to 1 USD.
Another thing we need to remember about this region, is the high saturation rate of mobile phones. MenaPay will bring easy-to-use solutions such as desktop and mobile wallets, integration APIs and reporting and a management solutions for merchants, all with Arabic user interfaces.
MenaPay has some extremely big players backing it.. If you look at some of the family names on the website, you’ll see these are some of the wealthest people in the region.
It was recently announced that, Saudi Arabian Princess H. H. Hamadi Ahmed Khadher has joined as a board member of MenaPay. This is another HUGE endorsement for the project!
Tokenomics and Roadmap
The public token sale starts in November and they hope to be listing on one of the top ten exchanges by December this year.
Menapay have quite an ambitious plan and they intend to have five million users by May of next year.
I do like the way the roadmap is drawn out it’s clear and easy to follow:
The tokenomics are as follows:
If you’re interested in this head over to their telegram group , if you don’t have
telegram there’s a phone number you can use they’ve got an email and Facebook account.
I definitely think this is something to look into further, and cryptocurrency and blockchain technology could definitely be utilised here to solve that problem.
I like cryptocurrencies that are trying to address real world problems. This is definitely one of those projects.
I’d love to know what you guys think of this, comment below share your views with me.
You can find out more about the project here: https://www.menapay.io/
Check out their Telegram group here: https://t.me/MenaPay
Onepager-: https://www.menapay.io/onepager.pdf
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