Blockchain
Vodafone’s PairPoint attempts to turn mobile SIM cards into crypto wallets
Watch: Vodafone CPO David Palmer’s Pairpoint speaks to Yahoo Finance Future Focus
Vodafone will use SIM card technology to meet the expected increase in demand for cryptocurrency on mobile phones.
Vodafone Pairpoint CPO David Palmer spoke Focus on the future of Yahoo Finance on how the company is promoting the use of blockchain on mobile devices to manage crypto transactions.
“Inside every mobile phone there is a SIM card and we have focused on connecting the mobile phone SIM card to digital wallets, identity and blockchain, using the cryptography we have in those SIM cards for integration of blockchain,” Palmer told Yahoo Finance.
Palmer outlined how the company’s Pairpoint brand is advancing Web3 and Internet of Things (IoT) services using SIM card technology for blockchain-based digital wallets on mobile devices. “Pairpoint provides a secure digital platform that allows vehicles, devices and machines to interact and trade with each other autonomously and seamlessly,” Vodafone said website She said.
Rise of blockchain-based digital wallets
Palmer believes there will be 5.6 billion blockchain-based digital wallets by 2030, providing the gateway to financial services.
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Palmer highlighted the use of public blockchains such as ethereum (ETH-USD). He noted the increasing speed and security of blockchains, but acknowledged regulatory hurdles.
“The long-term path is towards using public blockchains like the Ethereum network, and with the Ethereum fork, we are starting to see public blockchains becoming faster and more secure,” Palmer added.
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But he acknowledged regulatory barriers, adding that “with traditional financial services there are regulations that prevent them from using public blockchains due to sanctions.”
Vodafone’s digital asset brokerage platform
One of Vodafone’s products (VOD.L) The key innovation in this space is the digital asset broker PairPoint platform. Palmer detailed how ParPoint can facilitate transactions between public blockchains, like the Ethereum network, and private blockchains like JPMorgan’s Onyx, which uses smart contracts for seamless integration.
He said: “We act as an intermediary for large enterprises that want to write on a public blockchain. These large financial services can connect to the Vodafone blockchain, it gets registered there and then a smart contract using things like account abstraction, allows cross-chain interoperability.”
The story continues
Vodafone’s digital asset brokerage platform followed their first experiments with peer-to-peer micropayment transactions. Vodafone later integrated its SIM card technology with blockchain, introducing interoperable “digital identity passports”. These passports, anchored in the blockchain, securely store private keys in digital wallets within the SIM card’s hardware module.
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This culminated in the creation of Vodafone’s Pairpoint platform, which provides Internet of Things (IoT) devices with decentralized digital identities and enables them to operate across organizational and system boundaries.
Palmer illustrated this concept with scenarios in which devices equipped with hardware wallets could authenticate and execute transactions autonomously: for example, an autonomous electric vehicle could pay for its own charging at a charging station.
But Palmer warned of the importance of protecting these wallets from cyber threats and acknowledged that they will be prime targets for hackers.
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