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Mozilla and a host of other big firms have invested in Wallets Africa, a Bitcoin-supported financial startup based in Lagos, Nigeria.
In a declaration today, Wallets Africa says it received funding from Mozilla Corporation, 9Yards Capital, Samurai Incubate, and Y Combinator CEO, Micheal Seibel. The fund came not long after Y Combinator bought a 7.5% equity in Wallets Africa for $150,000.
Wallets Africa is centered on solving cross-border payment woes and so supports Bitcoin. Its users can seamlessly spend cryptocurrency just by converting their funds into fiat currency almost immediately without fear.
Wallets users can transact with third parties and transfer funds to local bank accounts at a cheaper rate. Through the wallet, users can send funds to Ghana and Kenya from Nigeria.
Wallets Africa permits for local payments like buying of airtime, cable TV payments, and some other utilities.
For those who want to make international payments, Wallet Africa has virtual dollar and naira cards for users to make payments internationally or locally. With the cards, users can buy on Amazon, pay for Netflix subscriptions, and checkout on some other online stores.
Africa is becoming the next bus stop for investors. Last year, the CEO of Twitter and Square Crypto, Jack Dorsey, announced the decision to relocate to Africa in the nearest future.
While the news has it that the cerebral CEO is reconsidering the decision due to the COVID-19 pandemic and some other issues, Jack mentioned that he would keep on searching for more opportunities in Africa.
In November, Dorsey visited Africa and Nigeria in particular and promised to relocate to the continent and stay for up to six months, but the CEO was attacked for deciding to stay farther from his companies.
Be that as it may, different companies and investors are trooping into the tropical region for possible investments. In 2018, African startups saw significant growth. As contained in the 2018 venture investment report, African startups raised $725.6 million.
In 2019 also, African startups raised $1.3 billion, a high amount compared to the $200 million raised by the firms in 2015. Kenya and Nigeria received 81.5% of these investments and the Africa’s most populous country received the highest investments.
These, no doubt, shows that businesses are eyeing Africa more than before, and are beginning to see opportunities in Africa despite the dwindling acceptability of technology in the region.
In a separate development, Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation created Mojaloop to render free financial services to the unbanked people of Africa, thereby increasing the number of those who has direct access to digital funds.
Gate’s inclusive banking system is geared to link small financial platforms and make perfect fund transfer for rural dwellers.