The largest Filipino bitcoin company Satoshi Citadel Industries (SCI) has announced its Boom Cash project, the digital payments system “for the offline world.”

Boom Cash is an SMS-based wallet powered by the blockchain technology, which lets its customers send and receive money via SMS without having Internet connection. The transfers are made in bitcoins and then turned into Philippine Pesos, since Boom Cash currently only services the Philippines.

To use Boom Cash, customers need to text “REGISTER” to a special number and create their own unique bitcoin address by texting “DEPOSIT BTC” to the same number. Then they can easily send money via SMS even to those who don’t have a Boom Cash account.

Since only 15% of the Filipinos use smartphones, the idea of the wallet which does not require a device with special features seems to be quite relevant for the country.

Those who do own smartphones can use Rebit, the service launched by SCI earlier this year in partnership with California-based ZipZap.

Maria Rudina