Author: Eddy L. Borges-Rey

By: Mohammed El-edrisi

The wait for the “sandbox” technology is finally over. After the Governor of Qatar Central Bank HE Sheikh Abdullah bin Saoud Al-Thani first announced the launching of a “new platform to support Fintech” back in October 2018 at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, the platform is now done and has been officially launched on Wednesday February 12, 2020.     

His Excellency Sheikh Abdullah bin Saud Al Thani, Governor of the Central Bank of Qatar, said that the Central Bank, representing the supervisory and supervisory body for the financial sector, is fully aware of the importance of financial technology in the development of the banking and financial sector in the state, and from this logic, and within the framework of the Qatar National Vision 2030, have decided to launch this platform.

The “Sandbox” technology for computer security was launched as a part of QCB’s preparations to reveal its Financial Technology (Fintech) strategy.

In his opening speech during the ‘Qatar-UK Financial Services Event’ held Wednesday in Doha, HE the Governor of Qatar Central Bank (QCB) Sheikh Abdulla bin Saoud al-Thani said Sandbox “we are going to pave the way for a new generation of financial services in the state of Qatar, as part of the upcoming financial inclusion strategy, which will be launched soon on an official state level.” Sandbox technology is for computer security that separates running programs and malware.

The Mayor of the City of London “Alderman William Russell” was among the high profile individuals who were present during the QCB governors speech and announcement.

The QCB governor also focused on talking about the strong connection and coalition between Qatar and the UK in the field of cybersecurity and the financial sector. He also emphasized how he’s proud of the ties between both countries and how he has seen a huge development in the last decade. He then went on to drift away from the financial and technology sectors to speak about how the ties between both countries isn’t limited to that but also extends to an important sector, which is the education sector.

Sheikh Abdullah announced that the Uk and Qatar have agreed to build the Qatar Centre for International Finance and Banking, describing how it will be a blueprint for growing human capital and to helping grow and develop education and training in the field of finance.

He said the agreement will help achieve the goals of Qatar National Vision 2030, and the strategy of the financial sector in the state of Qatar, especially to human resource development.

According to Sheikh Abdulla, the ‘Qatar-UK Financial Services Event’ the topics during the forum are related to regulating Fintech and the role it plays in promoting the role of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in society.

In an interview with the Gulf Times, the UK ambassador to Qatar Ajay Sharma expressed how the staging of the ‘Qatar-UK Financial Services Event’ is a follow up to the success of a previous cooperative event held last year in London by the name of “Qatar Day” which was made to strengthen the long-term relationship between Qatar and UK.

Sharma also emphasized the importance of building strategic partnerships as the UK looks forward to the creation of an advanced financial service centre in Qatar that helps achieve the goals the country is trying to achieve for Qatar National Vision 2030. 

By: Mohamed Eledrisi

What is a pyramid scheme? Is the business opportunity you’ve been offered real or a scam?

You wake up one day and you make your way to your university, gym session, or your job. You get a phone call from a friend telling you about this online business and how it makes you some real nice extra income. He doesn’t want to give away too much about the business so he tells you to meet him at a coffee shop so he can show you the “business presentation”.

The scenario you’ve just read is how multi-level marketers get in contact with their friends in order to recruit them to work with their companies. But is this “business presentation” you’re going to listen to, a scam? Or is it real? In order to answer this question, we must first rewind back in history and see where the word “Pyramid Scheme” or “Ponzi Scheme” came from and figure out what it means. 

The term Ponzi Scheme was named after Italian swindler Charles Ponzi. He was a big scammer in Italy in the 1920’s and was going to be thrown in jail for his actions. He then realized it was dangerous to stay in Italy, and made his way to North America. He roamed the US for a while, going from city to city, till he ended up north in Montreal, Canada. He worked for an Italian bank in Montreal and slowly went back to his old ways and tried to forge signatures to get access to money and cheques. He eventually got caught and thrown in jail for 3 years, before deciding to later move back to the US where he found the key to his financial freedom. 

Charles Ponzi came up with a fraudulent investing scam promising high rates of return with little risk to investors. This fraudulent scheme ends up  generating returns for early investors by obtaining new investors. So the whole scheme is based on using new investors’ funds to pay the earlier investors, meaning if people stop investing, the scheme will collapse.

Multi Level Marketing is a “business model or marketing strategy in which the distributors’ income includes their own sales, and a percentage of the sales group they recruit, which is commonly known as their ‘downline’. Customers can also sign up as a distributor to sell the company’s product”

A pyramid scheme is a business model that recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying investments or sale of products. As recruiting multiplies, recruiting becomes quickly impossible, and most members are unable to profit; as such, pyramid schemes are unsustainable and often illegal. 

Our techtalk team came up with a list of questions to help you figure out if the business opportunity you are being presented with is a scam or worth taking.

1. Has the company been around for more than 7 years?

Over the years it has been harder and harder for pyramid schemes to last for a long period of time, especially since they have been banned in many countries around the world such as the US and the UK. The 7 year mark in the world of business always proves that a company has bypassed all legal and technical issues and is an important factor in proving whether a company is a pyramid scheme or not.

2. Is the majority of your income coming from recruiting people, or is the main source of income based on an actual service/product?

Any pyramid scheme company depends on recruitment as its main source of profit. The product that the company provides, is at many times considered an “imaginary” product, meaning that the real cash flow of the company is not through the product or service being sold but instead literally just through people joining or “new investors”. This is the main reason why pyramid scheme companies end up going bankrupt or disappearing. 

     3) What country is the business you’re being offered based in? 

The reason this question is so important is because as mentioned before, pyramid schemes are illegal in many countries around the world. So for example if you were provided with a business opportunity from a company based in the US, and the company is a public trade US company, this would mean that it’s being monitored by the Federal Trade Commission and Security Exchange Commission. In simpler terms, this means that the company is being watched by the government and would totally get shut down if it didn’t comply with these government regulations.

In conclusion, there are real Network Marketing/E-Commerce businesses running in Qatar that you could make real extra income from. Statistics tell us that most people that do join these companies don’t achieve financial freedom or being “rich” but a good sum of people do make a stable income through these opportunities. Make sure to do your research before taking any business opportunity, and always ask people who have been through the experience beforehand.