impactMarket, the decentralized finance infrastructure working towards the eradication of poverty, is joining the Celo’s DeFi For the People initiative, focused on making decentralized finance accessible to everyone with a smartphone.
DeFi (Decentralized Finance) has seen explosive growth because of the development of new apps and technology, but its adoption has been mainly limited to users in developed countries. The Celo Foundation launched the DeFi for the People initiative to encourage more developers, organizations and tech companies to use this tool for the greater good: making DeFi more accessible to everyone with a smartphone, around 6 billion users over the world. The initiative has a support fund of $100M to invest in startups and companies who are at the forefront of impact innovation.
impactMarket was already linked to Celo, as it operates on top of their network to provide donations via blockchain technology. For money transfers, impactMarket uses Valora, Celo’s wallet that serves the poverty alleviation mission focused on distributing unconditional basic income.
Apart from this prior link between the two organisations, impactMarket has been supported by other projects part of the Celo ecosystem, including AriSwap, Ubeswap, Mobius, Moola Market, the validators’ pledge initiative by Tango Validators and Validator Capital, and NFT projects like CeloPunks and CeloApes.
With over $1.65 million distributed to almost 25,000 beneficiaries in over 25 countries to this day, impactMarket is leveraging and empowering vulnerable communities around the world, specially those who are unbanked and don’t have access to money – already making DeFi more accessible and simpler to use for those who need it most.
“We reach communities that no one else can reach. Many of the people we reach are “unbanked”; the traditional financial system does not reach them, one of the main reasons for extreme poverty.” explains Marco Barbosa, impactMarket’s Co-Founder and CEO. “About two billion people worldwide have no access to financial services or banking institutions, and with DeFi we can change this, that is why impactMarket is an ally to this movement, representing financial inclusion and empowerment for the most vulnerable”.