Bitmal

A social fintech solution enabled by a Blockchain decentralized system, consisting of a currency token and a marketplace  to reward community contributions. It attributes an economic value, through its social currency token ( Bitmal), to impactful contributions to the local communities. The platform features a rewards mechanism and an intrinsic social scoring system that optimizes impact on local communities by enabling its members to earn and transfer  Bitmals  currency token to enterprises that have the most appealing value proposition and to the most trustworthy and engaged members of the community

Through its social currency token (Bitmal), it:

•  Rewards members of the community actively contributing with their skills and talents and enables  them  to use Bitmals earned to:

  • fund social enterprises, organizations and initiatives the community needs the most 

  • earn rewards through the Bitmal Market place that would allow them to further gain expertise and skills

• Allows social enterprises/organizations to scale by using Bitmals earned to procure goods and services from the Bitmal Marketplace

• Allows donors  to optimize allocation of funds by financing social project/ enterprises that the community identifies as having the most appealing value proposition.

Bitmal innovative social fintech solution has recently addressed many of the challenges that have been further accentuated in light of the Covid- 19 pandemic namely
-increasing concerns of the transmission of the virus via cash which pushed for the use of digital currency
-social distancing increased shift to digital platforms
-Rising economic pressures limited ability of many to repay their loans as they lost their sources of income
-Social imbalances revealed by Corona pandemic stressed need for greater financial inclusion and innovative fintech products that promote social responsibility,
- Increased sense of social responsibility, collective action and volunteerism.

However Impact of contributions to support communities are not optimized as they are:
a/ not systematically tracked in a transparent manner as to increase accountability, reduce corruption and hidden costs
b/ not rewarded, incentivized and recognized
c/ not always efficiently allocated

We have deployed Bitmal to support unprivileged communities  in Jordanconsisting of bottom of the pyramid Jordanians, Syrian and Palestinian refugees.  Target market consisted of:

- "mums":AT home mothers -with low level of literacy rate but who through deployment of the pilot revealed to be the most committed

- Youth: University students and young professionals

-  Entrepreneurs: Members of the community who 

The pilot aims at developing a better understanding of the needs of the community.  To that end, we recruited coordinators from within the community to work closely with members of community and organized awareness campaign and consultation meetings.

Bitmal impact:

• Mobilizing collective action by members of local communities.

• Optimizing social impact by enabling communities to re-allocate resources to where they have the greatest needs and to those they trust the most. It leverages blockchain technology and data to crowd source decision making process to members of the community in decentralized manner by distributing Bitmals. 

• Attributing an economic value to social contribution and multiplying their  impact

• Increasing transparency and traceability of funds through blockchain infrastructure

• Creating a social scoring and rewarding systems incentivizing members of community to increase their contributions and engagement

• Gamification of the process of social contribution and engage younger demographics in the process of doing good. 

• Creating a multiplier effect in social giving by leveraging the deployment of regenerative economies

Bitmal builds an ecosystem that would enable members of community to :

- be rewarded with Bitmals currency token for their work

- use Bitmals earned to cover social insurance programs 

Blockchain infrastructure would enable and tracking of their contributions and trace funds.

Furthermore, the platform would enable them to:

- identify opportunities on the platform that would allow them to contribute their time and expertise, earn Bitmals,  acquire new skills and expertise

- earn rewards through Marketplace such as training programs

- social scoring would enable them to be recognized for their work and their contributions

There is a need for a paradigm shift in means to address systematic challenges that faces social work. Bitmal is disrupting the way social work is done.  it incentives community  to become stakeholders of  issues as opposed to being a stand-byer or a recipient of a service. It aims at mobilizing the whole community to become problem solvers.by changing people’s behaviour on how to solve social issues,

While there are a number of ventures that reward and incentivize members of communities for their work or funnel donations to organizations, , Bitmal is unique in that it  introduces a new framework to operate within. It introduces a blockchain based system and a marketplace that connects supply and demand sides of contributions in a systematic manner while measuring impact,  building trust and reputation.  It builds an integrated ecosystem that provides a  disruptive  fintech solution  as it ;

-       Incentivizes community contributions through social scoring

-       Enables community to decide on allocation of resources through Bitmal Social Currency

-       Brings together entrepreneurs, experts, donors  and  members of the community allowing them to gain skills & scale through Bitmal Marketplace

-       Increases accountability & traceability of funding through Blockchain Technology

BitMal is a BlockChain based social market place that attributes a value, in aform of social currency token to contributions of members of the community. By creating such value, social contributions are “priced” in Bitmals which makes that value exchangeable. This leads to a wider socio economic impact and multiplier effect.

Automating the value trading system through Bitmal will create a decentralized global social marketplace for everyone to contribute to the communities of their choice. BitMal uses Blockchain technology to build a transparent ecosystem embedding an intrinsic social scoring,

Through its blockchain technology, Bitmal will instill a transparent system that tracks and traces contributions of donors, rewards and recognizes the work of volunteers and traces milestones achieved by organizations.-

Bitmal theory of change is grounded on the following activities and outputs:

Encourage community contributions

• Increase in the number of volunteering hours and value of voluntarism

• Increase in the number of volunteers

• Increase in the engagement of volunteers

Incentivize scaling and formation of enterprises

• Increase in the number of projects and enterprises

• Costs of running and  funding enterprises are decreasing

Encourage decentralization by outsourcing the decision making process to the community of volunteers and build the ecosystem

• Volunteers have an urge to re-donate the BitMals to support Social Enterprises/Start-ups

• Streamlining of process flow through the ecosystem with minimal bottlenecks

The deployment of Bitmal pilot showcased success of the theory of change on the ground

The solution would bring together the different stakeholders to build an ecosystem that would have multi faceted benefit for the community and provide social insurance to information workers.   Bitmal social currency would be used through platform enabled by blockchain technology platform to better track funds , avoid corruption and mis-use of funds.

Adoption of the platform by different stakeholders would optimize impact:

- Government 's  identity verification and authentication mechanisms offered by the fID system would constitute the base of the platform's  KWC  as to connect different nodes of the ecosystem 

- Service providers- from public and private sector would onboard on the platform and receive Bitmals 

- Employers and entrepreneurs to post opportunities on the platform to which users of the platform can apply to and be selected

-Training providers and mentors to be onboarded on marketplace to provide rewards in terms of training progam

With consent of the users, the system could automatically deduct amount required to cover for different social protection schemes as they earn Bitmals-  By using social currency as opposed to fiat currency, would allow them to create a multiplier effect for each Bitmal injected in the system and its use for impactful purposes.

The ecosystem, would not only allow them to systematically cover different social protection schemes but as well to tap into new opportunities, gain visibility and recognition by community , acquire new skills and exposure

The platform would onboard service providers of social protection programs and allow them to post different schemes on the marketplace for each user by linking it to their ID system-  The solution user friendliness stems in fact that it would allow user to have all elements in one platform and be able to track and trace while positively impacting his/her community-

Bitmal ’s ecosystem will involve the use of Stellar blockchain, which follows a Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), allowing advantages of Decentralized Control, Low Latency, Flexible Trust and Asymptotic Security. It provides a way to reach consensus without relying on a closed system to accurately record financial transactions. SCP has a set of provable safety properties that optimizes for safety over liveness—in the event of partition or
misbehaving nodes, it halts progress of the network until consensus can be reached.  It will be open for APIs provided for integration

We had deployed the platform with unprivileged community in Jordan where users had low literacy level- we worked closely with community to understand their needs and based on their feedbacks, we have developed a second beta version of a mobile application as we realized that majority of those with limited literacy level used their mobiles- and even used applications such as whatsapp.  We realized that with this target audience, we needed to have physical presence to onboard them, raise awareness, regular consultation meetings and  tutoring sessions which greatly impacted success of the platform and their endorsement of the theory of change.

Currently 100 users

As we foster more partnership with local organizations and scale the platform from a beta version to a full fledge platform, we project   2000 in one year and 100,000 in five years as the ecosystem scales up

Our main objective for next year is to deploy a full fledge platform and foster partnerships with many organizations along .with  achieving the following short term goals

• Scalability of the model to use cases

• Proving White label models 

• Proving the technology

• Adapting the Business Model

• Growth Markets

• Adjustability of model to different markets

In the longer term, we aim at scaling the Bitmal ecosystem and its market place across different countries

Main Barriers:

 - regulatory provisions that limit deployment of Blokchain technology and social currency in a number of countries  and cross- border transfers

- Securing funding  to deploy a full fledge platform 

- Bringing together different stakeholders to build the ecosystem 

- Partnerships with policy makers and regulators to overcome obstacles to deployment of disruptive business models and technology

-  We strongly believe the World Bank Group in its systematic approach to bring together the different stakeholders to implement its program would create a conducive environment to building an ecosystem in line with Bitmal theory of change and support development of a full fledge platform

Co-founder are working on full time basis

Two members of the team are working on part time basis and three are contractors/consultants

Shared strategic vision and passion to provide innovative  solution to support community development.  Team members share the believe that Bitmal would bring positive impact. They complement each other in level of expertise and experience-  Co-founders where school mates and have worked together for a number of years on a number of initiatives

We have been working with Saudi Telecom Company, World Bank Group and local organization such as Ruwwad Al Tanmiya in addition to an accelerator in Geneva-  We have for instance developed a Memorandum of understanding with Ruwwad Al Tanmiya to deploy the pilot and to work with their team

1- Administration fees:
Bitmal will charge users of the platform, an administration fee at Cash in and Cash out- as Bitmals are exchanged into to Fiat currency and vice versa
2- Trading of Bitmal currency tokens:
As the currency evolves from a reputational token to a utility token
3- Fee structured deal and white label solutions
Bitmal will provide corporations, financial institutions, endowment funds and governmental organizations two main solutions:
a/ a fee structured deal for their organizations to use the platform either for their employees to volunteer and support local communities or as part of their social corporate responsibility to donate
b/ or provide them with a unique white label interface /solutions 

While at early stage we are relying on grants and own funds till we develop a full fledge platform, we aim at being financially sustainable by generating revenues streams outlined above

We have raised funds through Saudi Telecom Company, our own funds and received advisory support and mentorship by World Bank Group

We aim at raising $500k to scale the platform from a beta version to  a full fledge platform

We estimate budget of expenses to be around: 

-$500k to develop and deploy full fledge platform

- $200k for operational costs

The program is aligned with what Bitmal goal of building an ecosystem that would optimize impact local communities.  The deployment of Bitmal within that program is what we  aspire for and would we would greatly benefit working with WBG team and  local stakeholders- 

We hope through this program that we receive needed support to scale platform from a beta version to a full fledge  and benefit from mentorship and technical advise on technological, legal and financial perspectives

Technological advise to scale platform from a beta version to a full fledge platform and  best link it with service providers and contextualize solution to local needs

Financial front: on business model 

Legal advise on KYC and cross borders payments

World Bank Group