Africa and Bitcoin: Remittance Revolution
If you are a member of Africa’s expanding diaspora, then Bitcoin could potentially hold the key to a better life for your friends and relatives in the motherland. Many nations on the African continent are dependent on money transfers from abroad known as remittances. In fact, it comprises a significant portion of the GDP of many African countries where 326 million people lack access to basic banking services. Among the Bitcoin related companies spearheading the movement are Kipochi, BitPesa and M-Pesa. In Swahili, Kipochi means wallet or purse - a fitting name for a Bitcoin wallet that....
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The Bitcoin remittance business is blowing up all over the world. South African financial website moneyweb brings us the report directly from the oldest continent. The conditions that led to El Salvador making Bitcoin legal tender are present all over Africa. The people are unbanked but everybody has mobile phones. Plus, the diaspora is huge and sends money home constantly while big companies rob them blind with high fees. Related Reading | Is Largely Unbanked Africa Primed for Bitcoin Adoption? “The African continent has many opportunities for widespread Bitcoin adoption. One of....
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:....
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....