Kenya’s Banks Unveil PesaLink to Compete with Investors’ Favourite BitPesa
Kenya Bankers Association, hereinafter KBA, has unveiled a new transfer product aiming to bypass the country’s ubiquitous use of the M-Pesa mobile service. Dubbed PesaLink, it gives bank customers the ability to transfer money between banks in real time without the need of third parties, where M-Pesa is undoubtedly the major contender. “PesaLink is the proof that the banking industry has embraced the technology revolution sweeping across the payment industry,” local news resource The Standard quotes KBA CEO Habil Olaka as saying. M-Pesa has traditionally been extremely popular in Kenya, a....
Related News
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....
The global remittances industry is now worth over $500bn a year and, for bitcoin advocates, it represents unimpeachable proof of the need for decentralized digital currency. With high fees on international money transfers and few players in the market, the space is, to use the cliché, ripe for disruption. Enter BitPesa, a bitcoin remittances company that integrates with Kenya's mobile money system M-Pesa. Its success in challenging giants like Western Union in the Kenyan market will signal whether or not bitcoin can compete in the remittances market globally. Social business. BitPesa CEO....
Safaricom, a leading Kenyan mobile network operator with a multi-billion dollar revenue, tried to shut down a promising Bitcoin startup called BitPesa back in November 2015. The fact that the largest telecom corporation in the country abused its power and monopoly over the Kenyan financial industry in an attempt to eliminate a Bitcoin startup represents the significance and importance of the digital currency in the Kenyan financial market. How it all started. BitPesa was the most highly regarded Bitcoin startup in all of Africa. Both international and local investors and venture capital....
BitFury is a well-respected company in the Bitcoin community, as they are a hardware manufacturer as well as a company helping with validating transactions. In one of their recent announcements, the company mentioned how they made a strategic investment in BitPesa. This investment will help grow the Bitcoin trading platform and universal payment solution offered by BitPesa. BitFury Investment in BitPesa. It may sound strange on paper to hear BitFury has taken an interest in BitPesa, let alone invest in the company. But both businesses share a similar goal, as they want to increase....
Safaricom, the mobile network operator behind M-Pesa has released an Application Programming Interface (API) for all developers who want to create solutions tied directly into their payment systems. M-Pesa is Kenya’s largest mobile money service and world’s most successful to date. About 43 percent of Kenya’s GDP flows through the service and close to 70% of Kenya’s adult population has an account for the service. Safaricom’s website reads: “The new M-PESA platform dubbed G2 (for M-PESA 2nd generation platform) offers versatile integration capabilities that our development partners can....