Infinity beckons the imagination to venture beyond the stars, but we are limited not by our imagination, because that seems to have no bounds, we are limited to what can actually be done. Technology is such a good example, and I have the luck to have been introduced to radio as a kid, TV as I got older, the Internet when it was created, Facebook when it started, E-commerce when it boomed and bust, the idea of bitcoin and the birth of blockchain.

Essential to growth is the all-important infrastructure. Without infrastructure, scaling is a slow process. Once ancient pathways through the fields developed into modern roads and feet were replaced by horses and then cars, growth became exponential. Technology on an infrastructural level requires the same creation and the growth is quantumly exponential.

Due to the value of infrastructure, it is desired to be owned and controlled and for so long in technology, that was the model. I call it the “supremacist’s” model. Top-down ownership of everyone and everything. This is a model many governments follow, and one capitalists of past embraced with all their greed and gluttony. Putting community aside and benefitting the few became the national past time of the uber wealthy intent on outdoing one another in their accumulation of stuff at the expense of those who have little.

Then a mental revolution happened, and the idea of a decentralized empowering entity appeared in the form of The Blockchain. The use of technology at scale to empower people in a sovereign manner. True ownership of the self and not by multiple 3rd parties. It has birthed Bitcoin and a myriad of Crypto currencies and NFT’s and so much more. This is the delightful candy store of Web3 and all that encompasses.

In blockchain eco-systems, there is what is known as the digital triad. This consists of the Blockchain Rail, the Blockchain Anchors and the Blockchain platforms.

One such blockchain rail is Stellar. “Stellar is an open-source decentralized protocol for digital currency to fiat money, low-cost transfers, which allows cross-border transactions between any pair of currencies.”

Blockchain rails reduce settlement costs and speeds significantly from days to minutes and seconds or as we like to term it, near instant. This is achieved in essence by tokenizing or digitizing the physical collateral (fiat currency) which is held in a centralized location while the tokenized version is free to surf the entire digital realm and move near instantly to any desired destination. In accounting terms, it is the management of ledger transactions from one entity to another, to another and so on. At any time when the collateral has to exit the ecosphere, because someone is cashing out cash for example, the cash out takes place at any decentralized location supported, using a ledger swap. The collateral upon which the tokenized value was based is then settled between the various parties, called anchors.

These anchors are digital service providers attached to the physical collateral, which is linked to the digitized or tokenized equivalent. In essence, anchors create the digitized version of a physical asset that they hold as security. Wyre and MoneyGram® are two good examples of blockchain anchors that Empowch uses to facilitate cash to crypto digitization. All fiat currency held by these anchors has a digital equivalent that they generate and distribute. These fiat-crypto pairings are mostly done using stable coins such as USDC which are pegged 1:1 to the U$D. Anchors facilitate the on-ramp and off-ramp of fiat currency in exchange for digital value.

The third entity in the Blockchain triad is a blockchain platform like Empowch that seamlessly integrates various technologies from the various rails and anchors and presents them to the public as a single simple service. Empowch are the public facing, B2B2C, digital payments “retailer” that brings together blockchain rails, their anchors, and unites them in the Empowch platform for businesses and the public to engage with. This is done using digital wallets that can store value borderless.

Due to the current complexity of regulatory compliance in various countries, providing a payments solution to businesses and the public requires specific solutions that differ from one geographic landscape to the next. In practical terms, a freelancer in Saudi Arabia who does work for a company in Ghana, needs to be paid and getting a payments solution for that scenario may require partners who comply within Saudi regulation and Ghanaian regulations, all using their own technology. Empowch forges those partnerships and integrates the differing tech to seamlessly provide the payments solution to all parties involved.

Join us on our quest to Empower Peoples’ Pockets and download the Empowch app to see if your country pairing is supported and if we can provide a near instant, low-cost payments solution for you or your business.