Telecom/BitPesa Legal Tangle Over AML Threatens Mobile Payments In Kenya
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....
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The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) has warned that virtual currency is insecure and could fund terrorism, according to the Daily Nation. This comes a day after a court ruled that Safaricom, the nation's largest cell phone provider, will not have to reinstate access for BitPesa, Africa's largest bitcoin trading platform, to M-Pesa, the mobile payment service. 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, CCN recently reported. Safaricom stopped Lipisha from....
African Bitcoin startup BitPesa launched its remittance service in Tanzania today. The service previously was available only in Kenya, where the company is headquartered. It hopes to undercut the fees charged by incumbents' remittance services. BitPesa launched its international money transfer in Kenya last year with the goal of expanding the service to the rest of Africa, something the company has slowly been working toward. Besides its remittance product, the company operates an exchange in Kenya and Ghana but Tanzania is the first country the startup has expanded its international money....
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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....
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....