Kenyan President Nominates BitPesa Board Member for Cabinet
On Tuesday, November 24, 2015, Uhuru Kenyatta, the president of the Republic of Kenya, reshuffled his cabinet, dropping five cabinet secretaries and replacing them with new faces to give his government new impetus. Among the nominees is Joe Mucheru, who is a board member at Bitpesa, a Bitcoin exchange that leverages on mobile money services such as....
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Bitcoin remittance startup BitPesa has lost one of its board members following his appointment to a government position. Nairobi tech news site TechMoran reported today that Joe Mucheru, who previously served in a regional leadership role for Google, is stepping down from BitPesa’s board and is divesting his shares in a bid to remove any conflicts of interest in his role as head of the Kenyan Ministry of Information, Communications and Technology. Mucheru was named to the post in November, according to local reports, a move that came amid a reshuffling of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s cabinet.
A lawsuit filed by bitcoin payments startup BitPesa and its partner against mobile money giant Safaricom was heard in the Kenyan High Court on Tuesday. The startup says Safaricom "intimidated" its gateway partner, Lipisha, forcing it to suspend its services without prior notice, according to Kenyan newspaper the Daily Nation. The stoppage came into effect on 12th November. As a result, BitPesa and Lipisha are facing significant challenges to maintaining their business. A lawyer for the two firms told the Daily Nation that BitPesa is "at risk of collapse" because it's now unable to conduct....
As mobile payments and cryptocurrency have made strides providing an alternative to traditional banking in Kenya, legal conflicts have emerged among mobile currency providers and Safaricom, the nation's dominant telecom service. Kenyan legal authorities may need to clarify how anti-money laundering/know your customer (AML/KYC) and other regulations will be enforced and who will enforce them. BitPesa, a bitcoin payments and remittance service which uses the Safaricom telecom, and Lipisha, the payment gateway for both BitPesa and M-Pesa, are suing Safaricom in Kenya, according to....
A Kenyan High Court judge has ruled that M-Pesa operator Safaricom will not be required to grant access to bitcoin startup BitPesa amid an ongoing legal dispute. The move comes after the mobile payments firm Lipisha, along with BitPesa, asked the High Court of Kenya for a preliminary order that would enable access while their petition against Safaricom is being considered. As reported last month, BitPesa lost access to M-Pesa in mid-November when its payments gateway partner Lipisha had its account suspended by Safaricom. BitPesa had used Lipisha as a way to offer M-Pesa as a payment....
Joe Mucheru, the secretary of Kenya’s Ministry of Information and Communications and Technology (ICT), resigned from the board of BitPesa, Africa’s largest bitcoin trading platform, and started to offload his shares to prevent any conflict of interest, according to technmoran.com, an African news site. While some Africa bitcoin observers might view his departure as another setback for BitPesa, which has faced several challenges following its promising beginning as a bitcoin pioneer in Africa, his action demonstrates a commitment to integrity and impartiality that could bode well for....