“We have the opportunity to serve people, no matter where they are. If you have a mobile phone, you can use Valora.”

-Jackie Bona, CEO of Valora

Web3 is notorious for being difficult to understand and use. Many evangelists pitch visions of cryptocurrency strengthening our global financial systems, but who is building the infrastructure to enable this future? In a world where 91% of people own mobile phones, integrating blockchain technologies with existing phone numbers could drastically accelerate web3’s adoption and usability.

In this series of interviews of Celo leaders by DreamDAO, we meet our second guest, Jackie Bona, CEO of Valora. This post highlights what you need to understand about the future Valora is creating.

How would you describe Valora in one sentence? 🧐

Valora is a mobile crypto wallet, very similar to Venmo.

With Valora, you can do anything you would expect with a crypto wallet, like sending global peer-to-peer payments or accessing financial services and more via the dapps that Valora has listed in their app.

After you create an account, you verify your phone number, which connects to the blockchain and becomes your public key. (There is no long 42-character public key that you will instantly forget!)

Additionally, if a user without an account is sent crypto through Valora, those funds are held in a smart contract on the blockchain. So, once the user creates an account, they can access the funds by following the simple steps of signing up for an account.

Valora uses Celo stablecoins, and also supports over 50+ cryptocurrencies in the wallet.

Share the story of someone Valora has impacted in a big way. 🙌

From making it easier to pay your rent to distributing a universal basic income.

Easier to pay your rent:

There is a user named Pietro who is a dual citizen of the US and Costa Rica. All of Pietro’s roommates are from different countries with international bank accounts, so splitting payments like rent and food is difficult. They could not use Venmo, so Pietro and his roommates started using Valora for payments.

Distributing a universal basic income:

One of Valora’s first partners was Impact Market, which has UBI beneficiaries worldwide. Distributing UBI with crypto drastically reduces overhead costs and transfer fees compared to fiat-based UBI programs.

You can read more stories about Valora’s use cases on their blog.

Why is web3 important? 💚

Web3 makes users owners, and more opportunity comes with more ownership.

Similar to how the internet provided access to information and connection, web3 has opened a new world of ownership for us.

There are many practical financial service use cases with Valora and beyond Valora. There are many applications that those living in the developed world may not need that could change the lives of people living in emerging markets. Notably, services that provide microloans to those who would not otherwise have access to them could change everything for millions of people.

Do YOU have a mobile phone? 📱

If so, you can create a wallet with Valora! Follow this guide to create your account, and start sending payments today.

Valora launched one year ago, but this is just the start of the utility they envision providing to the world. To keep up with their work, you can follow Jackie and Valora on Twitter.

If you enjoyed this interview stay tuned with @DreamDAO_ and @CeloOrg on Twitter for more of our interview series with Celo leaders! Thank you :)