Test Stablecoins for micro payments to boost work gigs

Vision 2030, seemed in the distant future when it launched on 10 June 2008 chaperoned by then President Mwai Kibaki. As time lapses, we must be agile and adapt the strategies in light of new and more promising interventions especially under the economic and macro pillar.

We have a healthy youth dividend and a high unemployment rate. A ticking time bomb combination, given that we cannot absorb everyone into the job market – formal or informal.

It, therefore, begs that we must look for ways to connect the working class to opportunities to earn a decent living. Decent is the operative word here. I am not championing digital sweatshops with expectations that leave most of those who engage with festering mental health issues.

Many global platforms provide decent micro-work. One of the strategies is to make these visible to as many people as possible. In addition, on a running basis, check and filter for the quality of work, which sorts the first hurdle.

The second hurdle is remittance. A few weeks ago, I was shocked by the actions of a leading international payments processor. After completing work for a client, who then paid, they first took their fees and arbitrarily announced it would take another week to access the balance.

The delay, high fees, and the unfavorable exchange rate had me suggest we look at a stablecoin option next time. Imagine the same predicament for potentially thousands of youth on micro-work gigs.

Celo Foundation, which manages the Celo Platform, a mobile-first, open-source blockchain ecosystem, ran a pilot with Mercy Corps Ventures, which invests in high-impact enterprises, to test the viability of cross-border stablecoin micropayments for Kenyan micro-workers.

Payments happened in near real time in Celo dollars (cUSD), a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar after task completion. Participants could withdraw their earnings via mobile money with transaction fees hovering just above one Kenya Shilling.

Transaction costs on international payments eat a higher-than-acceptable margin from the average microwork compensation. Stablecoins unlock a lot more value from remittances, payments and commerce.

Several policy recommendations have been fronted to enable the regulator and other publics to actively promote and collaborate on use cases such as this, that add direct tangible value – read as clean, sustainable incomes for a growing population of increasingly disenfranchised youth, helping to also unlock other value-added services and benefits.