Will Bitcoin Foster a New Breed of Remittance Market in Africa?
During the 70s and the 80s, the African banking sector suffered a major liquidity and insolvency crisis. The finance practices were undoubtedly poor, and so do the supervision of counterpart risk. Though with time, the sector thoroughly improved with the introduction of more robust and resilient technologies. But even with vast improvements in Africa's national and local banking infrastructure, a majority of its people still found themselves deprived of using such services. As noted in an elaborative report by CNN, 75% of the sub-Saharan population still don't have a bank account. In the....
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BitPesa is revolutionising the way transactions happen between Africa and rest of the world. Africa as a continent is a congregation of developing nations. A majority of people live in substandard conditions without access to basic amenities. Access to financial institutions has been a farfetched idea to most of them. Not anymore, thanks to the bitcoin powered economy. Not so long ago at NewsBTC, we spoke about the Bitcoin powered economy in an article titled "Will Bitcoin Foster a New Breed of Remittance Market in Africa?". A few days hence, the trends seem to be promising. Particularly....
The 6th annual Remittance & Mobile Money Expo, held today and tomorrow – Feb. 2 and 3 in Lagos, Nigeria, will address the challenges and opportunities in the emerging African remittance market. Billing itself as the largest gathering of stakeholders in the remittance ecosystem serving Africa, the conference will be at the Lagos Oriental Hotel. The theme of the conference, hosted by MobileMoneyAfrica, a resource for mobile financial inclusion, is “lowering transaction cost.” There will be more than 30 speakers. According to MobileMoneyAfrica, Nigeria is the largest remittance....
International remittance is ostensibly one of the most compelling use cases for bitcoin and digital currencies. Recorded remittances to Africa grew four-fold between 1990 and 2010 and have increased steadily since. The World Bank projects $39bn in remittances to sub-Saharan Africa this year. Yet with the continent's fast-growing middle class and tech-savvy youth population, the high cost of remitting to sub-Saharan Africa, particularly from within Africa, has brought the subject of financial inclusion under new light. Africa has some serious market potential for bitcoin companies;....
When the words Bitcoin and Africa appear in a sentence, the word remittance usually follows. When Bitcoin first hit the mainstream in 2013, its low-cost money transfer feature was hailed as the solution to the overly expensive remittance costs charged by the large money transfer operators (MTOs), Western Union and MoneyGram. This is especially true when it comes to transferring funds to Africa. However, in the eight years since Bitcoin was first launched, bitcoin remittances in Africa have not really taken off. Bitcoin’s Challenges in Kenya. Bitcoin is an industry that regularly likes to....
Bitcoin is rising pretty fast in Africa. In fact, the digital currency has been growing exponentially all around the world. This year there has been a substantial growth in investments related to the digital currency and Africa is no exception to this trend. A lot of startups are springing up with innovative applications for Bitcoin in the African context; these innovative applications are disrupting the remittance market and making the cryptocurrency available over SMS. The main Bitcoin startups leading this new revolution in the continent are already widely known within the community:....