Video: How Bitcoin is Changing Banking in Africa

Werner van Rooyen, head of Business Development and Growth at Bitx, one of Africa’s biggest Bitcoin exchanges, spoke to CoinTelegraph about the problems and potential of Bitcoin in Africa. CoinTelegraph: Bitcoin use in Africa has improved in the last couple of years. What has really changed? Werner van Rooyen: Bitcoin, as measured in the amount of transactions per day, is steadily rising in Africa as it is in the rest of the world. Trading between local currencies and Bitcoin is higher today than it had been a few years back and there’s a big increase in Bitcoin awareness and discussion,....

Blockchain technology proponents are staking claims in Africa, paying special attention to banks. Six African banking institutions are making sure financial tech doesn’t disrupt their businesses by working together to connect their systems with distributed ledgers. Absa & Barclays Africa Testing Multiple Platforms Across the South African Region. One....

A new report from Ovum has found that 75 percent of corporate treasures in Africa and Latin America are interested in the solutions that blockchain can deliver to banks. Developed in partnership with Temenos, a Swiss financial services software specialist, the report, Understanding Today’s Corporate Treasurer: The Implications for Corporate Banking Services [PDF], looked at how the priorities and attitudes of today’s corporate treasurer across four main areas of responsibility are changing. These are cash and liquidity management, forecasting and analytics, risk and compliance, and cost....

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....

One of South Africa's largest banks has joined the global blockchain consortium led by R3CEV. Absa Bank, a subsidiary of Barclays Africa, announced today that it would be joining the 40-plus consortium, which includes a range of banks and non-bank financial institutions worldwide. Recent participants have included Chinese bank Ping An and the financial arm of automaker Toyota. The partnership is said to include an effort to develop a broader working group within South Africa focused on regional distributed ledger networks, with the goal of creating "the continent’s first distributed....