Vodafone is looking to integrate its cryptocurrency wallet and SIM cards.

Vodafone, a UK-based telecom provider, wants to bring blockchain technology to smartphone users by integrating cryptocurrency wallets and subscriber identity module (SIM) cards.

The ambitious move reportedly comes amid the company’s financial plans involving Vodafone Idea Ltd., a separate entity operating in India. Vodafone Group has taken on about $3 billion in debt, including $1.8 billion in loans over the next two years, and has a 45% stake. .

In a recent interview with Yahoo Finance Future Focus, Vodafone blockchain lead David Palmer discussed the company’s plans to integrate blockchain technology into smartphone SIM cards.

“By 2030, we expect there will be more than 20 billion mobile phones in use, most of which will be smartphones. … So we focused on connecting the SIM card to a digital identity, connecting the SIM card to the blockchain, and using the encryption on the SIM card for that integration.”

Elaborating on his numbers, Palmer predicted that there will be around 8 billion smartphones in use by 2030 and that cryptocurrency wallets will surge to 5.6 billion in the same period. This is enough to cover almost 70% of the total population. earth.

Vodafone Group has had a busy 2024 despite its ongoing financial wrangling with India-based Vodafone Idea Ltd, which recently sold $2.2 billion worth of shares ahead of a reported $3 billion debt financing plan.

As Cointelegraph recently reported, the company signed a 10-year strategic partnership with Microsoft to provide generative artificial intelligence (AI) services to Vodafone customers.

In announcing the deal, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took the opportunity to charm the disruptive nature of the company’s AI technology, declaring that “next-generation AI will open enormous new opportunities for every organization and every industry around the world.”

This is not the first time a company has combined mobile phone technology and blockchain hardware. In 2019, US startup VaultTel announced its ambitions to create a physical wallet that could be placed in the SIM slot of a smartphone.

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