After building her career on Wall Street, with roles at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, Stella Dyer (MBA 1994) launched Millicent, a blockchain-based company that Dyer hopes will make the global banking system more inclusive. Funded in part by British government through an Innovate UK Smart Grant, Millicent is designed to make it easier for the world’s 1.7 billion marginalized and unbanked people to access financial services, according to a recent article in Forbes.

Dyer moved to the United Kingdom as a refugee from Nigeria. When she was young, her family would send whatever money they could to relatives back at home—a process that opened Dyer’s eyes to the ways in which the financial system, with its long delays and steep fees, often winds up being most costly for those who have the fewest resources: Migrant workers from Senegal could expect to pay 10 percent in fees each time they send money home to help their families, for example.

The blockchain could change all of that though, and cryptocurrencies could empower anyone with a smartphone to have access to an equitable set of financial tools. “Through decentralized finance, the company hopes to usher in a new financial paradigm via an open infrastructure that breaks down walled gardens and creates a strong, collaborative foundation for the future of global financial services. Millicent offers lightning-fast money transfers at a fraction of the traditional cost per transaction,” according to Forbes.

It quite literally could change the world, Dyer says.

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