Telcoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency as well as a remittance payment system based on the Ethereum network. It was created to bridge the gap between cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and the telecommunication industry.
The global remittance industry business has been booming, with over-recorded remittance flows to low and middle-income countries and reaching $540 billion in 2020. Western Union is currently leading the remittance market with an annual business of $80 billion. The cost of sending remittances has been increasing every year.
The Global average cost of sending a remittance stands at 6.38 percent in Q1 2021, including fees and foreign exchange margin. However, telcoin plans to solve this problem by slashing the cost to just 2.5 percent or less to send a remittance using any mobile device. Telcoin aims to provide fast, secure, and borderless payment solutions to customers of major telecom giants.
To create a hassle-free environment between telecom mobile money and post-paid or prepaid billing platforms, the platform will integrate Telcoin with mobile networks operating globally.
This review of Telcoin (TEL) was created for informational purposes. This article is not intended for promotion.
Telcoin is the first cryptocurrency in the world to tap the potential of blockchain technology in the telecom sector. The company takes various measures to ensure that each transaction is as simple as possible.
The mobile money market is far-reaching, with over 1.2 billion registered accounts and 300 million monthly active accounts. Over 2 billion people do not have bank accounts as per the World Bank. At the same time, the number of smartphone users in the world has crossed over 3 billion, which translates to 48.2% of the global population. This means mobile phones are more accessible to most of the world’s population compared to banking services.
Even though few countries like Kenya have achieved to provide their citizens with mobile money accounts, the majority is considered underbanked, as the usability of mobile money is still restricted. This is because regulators have played a significant role in holding back financial inclusion.
However, times have changed with more pressure hovering over regulators to include cryptocurrencies in the monetary policy. This has led to many countries adopting the blockchain markets. So once all the regulatory approvals are in place for cryptocurrency as a regulated taxable asset, regulatory barriers will diminish for a telecom while establishing exchange capability with Telcoin.
But to avoid potential regulatory hurdles to the formation of remittance corridors by Telcoin and its telecom partners, they have separated cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies in the Telcoin wallet.
Partnerships are an essential tradition in business because it helps both parties grow towards a mutual goal. To connect with a maximum number of telecom operators and mobile money platforms, Telcoin has partnered with local, regional, and global aggregators.
As Telcoin has established a remittance corridor between Canada and the Philippines, it is helping them to deliver an end-to-end product to the users. And once regulatory hurdles are cleared in different countries and access is obtained, Telcoin can expedite the process of adding new products to its ecosystem, which includes card access and DeFi products.
Telcoin is targeting to make the procedure of sending remittances as simple as sending a text message to anyone around the world. The idea is to have similar airtime that fiat currencies today enjoy with the current remittance corridors.
Moreover, while going through the process of securing mobile money connection capability in different markets, they are connecting to airtime platforms via aggregators. There is more than one reason to connect to airtime platforms first, and the regulatory and banking complications of mobile money connectivity are one of them.
For example, in a country like Nigeria, where mobile money adoption is shallow, converting Telcoin to airtime can be much more effective than connecting to mobile money.
Telcoin is targeting the remittance market by providing consumers with the option of mobile money and cryptocurrencies. This will help the company to bag on two different markets simultaneously.
Furthermore, mobile operators that adopt Telcoin into their business will have an advantage over others because, with the help of Telcoin, they will be able to offer remittances and roaming payments services.
On the other hand, Telcoin collects a transaction fee every time TEL is purchased from or sold to a mobile operator and charges a 0.5% fee at the point of conversion. Also, exchange spreads are captured when a mobile operator buys or sells TEL from Telcoin in exchange for fiat currency.
In the telcoin ecosystem, subscribers will contribute to their liquidity provided they buy and sell equal amounts of TEL. Therefore, there may not be a need for mobile operators to buy or sell TEL.
Telcoin can apply a spread to maintain forex and TEL secondary market risks to manage the shortcomings in the inbound and outbound remittances. However, these spreads rely upon the intensity of forex imbalance and the liquidity and volatility of TEL on secondary markets. And it is designed in such a way that it generates enough profit margin from this exercise.
The Telcoin wallet was created in such a way that it is user-friendly for non-crypto users. For setting up a wallet, you will only require a mobile phone number and a six-digit PIN. And users are not asked to fill out various forms for the KYC process; all they need to do is take a photo of their government ID and a selfie.
The platform offers you two options: you can send TEL tokens by ERC-20 address if you are familiar with it, and a more straightforward method is to send to a phone number.
With the launch of the V3 of the Telcoin platform, many projects within the Telcoin ecosystem will revolutionize the remittance industry. To better understand the role of each project, we have explained them briefly.
SMS decentralizes foreign exchange for the active Telcoin users on DeFi protocols. And the fees that are exclusively awarded to legacy financial institutions can now be availed by remittance senders at a fraction of the cost, with an instant global settlement near mid-market prices.
Users on the Telcoin platform deposit TEL and distinct types of stablecoins into a diverse network of liquidity pools. These are the pools through which Telcoin SMS remittances flow as “send and swap” transactions with an instant bank to settlement in a single tap.
Now finally, it is up to the recipients to decide whether they want to instantly cash stablecoin balance out to local currency or any other supported stablecoin or ERC20 token on the Telcoin platform.
TELxchange is a decentralized digital asset exchange that is powered by Telcoin users on supported DeFi protocols, where users can quickly swap for TELxchange assets directly from their bank account. They can always retain custody of their assets, and active Telcoin users capture 100% of pool trading fees.
The integration of TELxchange markets into the Telcoin application enables users to swap TEL and other TELx ecosystem assets directly.
The native tokens of each TELx DeFi protocol are included in TELxchange’s token ecosystem. The purpose behind this is to enable TEL and native platform DeFi community to seamlessly swap between assets and participate across each network, governing and optimizing them to serve each network by themselves.
Rivendell is an open Ethereum sidechain that is operated, validated, and secured by MNOs (Mobile Network operators). Mobile network operators can provide blockchain-based, non-custodial financial services to their subscribers through Rivendell, thereby eradicating the need for a bank.
Telecoms can leverage their existing network and fraud infrastructure to power the system, which can be done at a fraction of the cost of the legacy system.
Telcoin is a Singapore-based company with a diverse team that operates out of Tokyo, Japan. Its team is spread across the globe, with offices in Los Angeles, Manila, and Singapore. The company was founded by Paul Neuner and Claude Eguienta in 2017. However, only Paul remains part of the project as of May 2021.
As part of the telecom sector with more than two decades of experience, Paul bought tremendous growth opportunities for Telcoin. Previously, Paul founded Mobius, a leading provider of telecom fraud management solutions that is now installed at more than 30 mobile operators globally.
Telcoin has been on track with its roadmap and has been delivering rapidly. With its recent launch of V3, it has unveiled many projects that are going to be a gamechanger in the remittance industry.
They have also launched SMS Network V1 on DFX (Polygon) and Quickswap with remittance markets between the USA, Singapore, Canada, and the Eurozone powered by TEL/USD, USD/CAD, USD/EUR, and USD/SGD asset-backed, stablecoin automated markets, which will be added to the Telcoin Application as soon as those markets are live and reach viability.
The Telcoin token TEL plays a vital role in the platform ecosystem. Users are required to hold TEL to be able to interact with the services of the network. Telecom operators can issue TEL to the subscribers depending on the volume of their transactions and integration maturity. This assures the most efficient delivery of a cheap remittance service to their subscribers.
TEL is used in sending remittances across various countries in the world. Users of the TELxchange platform can also swap TEL for other TELx ecosystem assets. It is used as the core reserve asset of SMS Network and TELxchange and bridge currency, thereby increasing the utility of the token, bypassing all token swaps through TEL.
Whether it is a stablecoin transfer or a swap for a non-TEL asset, the entire volume will flow through the TEL markets on DeFi.
According to GSMA’s latest report, the global value of daily transactions exceeded $2 billion and is expected to surpass $3 billion a day by the end of 2022. And International remittances have crossed over a billion dollars per month, and international remittances sent and received through mobile money increased by 65 percent.
Telcoin is trying to develop the mobile money markets through blockchain technology. The first remittance corridor between Canada and the Philippines explained the platform’s potential to its investors, which sored the price of TEL.
As we anticipate new remittance corridors, there will be extensive growth in business and adoption by various mobile operators. However, this may take some time because of the marketing and broader reach of the already existing major players in the market.
Since it was launched on the Ethereum network, the users must pay the gas fees, which keep fluctuating and sending across a small amount, and keeping the fees below 2% can be challenging to attain. Hopefully, with the launch of Ethereum 2.0, there will be a notable change in the gas fees paid by users.
That said, if Telcoin can convince more partners from the telecom sector and widen its reach, it will be the front-runner for blockchain technology in the telecom arena.
Over the past few years, Telcoin has shown tremendous growth in the telecom and blockchain sectors. It has changed the basic idea of how remittance payments can be made by leveraging blockchain technology. In the beginning, it was termed impossible by many to overcome the regulatory hurdles in different countries; Telcoin has proved how cryptocurrencies can leave a mark by helping users across the world.
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