Akon’s Akoin pilot heralded a success, eyes countrywide rollout in Kenya

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Akoin, the cryptocurrency project developed by Senegalese-American singer Akon, has achieved success in its initial pilot testing at western Kenya’s Mwale Medical Technology City, or MMTC, setting the stage for a national rollout beginning next month.

The pilot, which began in November 2020, is expected to pave the way for $5 million worth of transactions per month at MMTC, according to a spokesperson for Mwale Medical Technology City. As Cointelegraph reported, the pilot stage allowed residents to pay and be paid using Akoin and have the transactions converted immediately into cell phone minutes or other forms of exchange.

Full implementation is expected to begin in September, and monthly transactions are projected to surge, possibly reaching $2 billion by 2022. By that time, Akoin will become the only platform for business transactions in the city.

Akoin is a cryptocurrency designed to help entrepreneurs, business owners and social activists transact locally without many of the impediments that inflict emerging markets in Africa.

For full implementation to be successful, the Akoin project is targeting 5,000 workers within the first six months and 20,000 workers by the end of 2022. MMTC is scheduling a “major launch event for September” that will introduce Akoin for wider acceptance. The spokesperson explained:

“A major launch event scheduled for September will include the launch of a new hospital wing in MMTC and the activation of Akoin across 5,000 beds at the Hamptons Hospital and 30,000 transactions per month, utilizing Akoin’s Atomic Swap technology, Merchant Services and Akoin Credit and Debit Cards.”

The spokesperson further explained that, by the end of 2022, Akoin is expected to become the “second most popular payment platform after M-Pesa,” a mobile-phone-based money transfer and micro-financing service popular in Africa and other parts of the developing world.

Mwale Medical Technology City is described as a newly built city encompassing a state-of-the-art medical and technology complex. The pilot testing of Akoin was seen as a stepping stone for the cryptocurrency being adopted by the highly ambitious Akon City project in Senegal.