Vodafone to Integrate Cryptocurrency Wallets with SIM Cards

British telecommunications giant Vodafone plans to merge SIM cards with cryptocurrency wallets. This was revealed by the head of the company’s blockchain division, David Palmer, in an interview with Yahoo Finance.

According to his estimates, by 2030, there will be approximately 20 billion mobile devices in use. By the same time, the number of cryptocurrency wallets is expected to reach 5.6 billion.

“Therefore, we have focused on linking SIM cards to digital identification and blockchains, as well as using the cryptographic methods available in these SIM cards for integration,” Palmer added.

A company representative spoke about the Vodafone PairPoint Digital Asset Broker platform, which aims to become “the largest crypto asset ecosystem.” The solution facilitates transactions between public and private blockchains and “provides IoT devices with decentralized digital identifiers.”

The development is intended to simplify on-chain payments and integrate into the ecosystem of traditional money transfer operators.

Vodafone is one of the world’s largest mobile network operators, headquartered in Newbury, UK. Its subsidiaries and partner firms operate in many countries, including Russia and Ukraine.

In 2020, Vodafone exited the Libra Association, where it participated in the development of Facebook’s blockchain network.

Earlier, the omnichain project LayerZero entered into an agreement with Conflux to collaborate on the use of blockchain-based SIM cards (BSIM) developed by the startup and China Telecom. Through this partnership, BSIM owners will be able to transfer assets and messages between networks via the protocol.

In July 2023, one of China’s largest state banks, the Bank of China, implemented a new offline method for paying with the digital yuan using SIM cards.