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| Private | |
| Industry | Bitcoin, payments, financial technology, blockchain |
| Founded | 2013 |
| Founder | Elizabeth Rossiello |
| Headquarters | Nairobi, Kenya |
| Products | Financial Services |
| Website | www |
BitPesa is a wholesale cryptocurrency liquidity provider for individuals and institutions across Africa.
BitPesa was founded in November 2013 by Elizabeth Rossiello with headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya and offices and staff in Lagos, London, Luxembourg, Dakar and Madrid.
By the end of May 2014, BitPesa launched its beta site with a service that allowed users to send money to any mobile money wallet in Kenya. [1] At the end of December 2014, customers in Kenya could buy bitcoins on the platform. BitPesa launched in Tanzania in May 2015 allowing customers to send Tanzanian Shillings to three mobile networks in the country.
In November 2015, BitPesa launched in Nigeria and Uganda. [2]
By January 2017, BitPesa had closed a $2.5 million Series A funding round to focus on becoming the largest licensed payment company in the UK, Europe and Africa that offers real-time settlement at wholesale FX rates to frontier markets. [3]
In February 2018, BitPesa acquired TransferZero, an online money transfer company in Spain. [4] [5] BitPesa launched its services in Ghana in March 2018. [6]
BitPesa along with one more startup from Kenya made to World Economic Forum's 2018 Technology Pioneers Cohort. [7] [8]
In October 2019, BitPesa rebranded, making it the flagship product of AZA Group. [9]
A remittance is a transfer of money, often by a foreign worker to an individual in their home country. Money sent home by migrants competes with international aid as one of the largest financial inflows to developing countries. Workers' remittances are a significant part of international capital flows, especially with regard to labor-exporting countries.
Safaricom PLC is a listed Kenyan mobile network operator headquartered at Safaricom House in Nairobi, Kenya. It is the largest telecommunications provider in Kenya, and one of the most profitable companies in the East and Central Africa region. The company offers mobile telephony, mobile money transfer, consumer electronics, ecommerce, cloud computing, data, music streaming, and fibre optic services. It is most renowned as the home of MPESA, a mobile banking SMS-based service.
M-Pesa is a mobile phone-based money transfer service, payments and micro-financing service, launched in 2007 by Vodafone Group plc and Safaricom, the largest mobile network operator in Kenya. It has since expanded to Tanzania, Mozambique, DRC, Lesotho, Ghana, Egypt, Afghanistan and South Africa. Meanwhile services in India, Romania, and Albania have been terminated amid low market uptake. M-Pesa allows users to deposit, withdraw, transfer money, pay for goods and services, access credit and savings, all with a mobile device.
The Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) is a Pan-African training program, seed fund and incubator in Accra, Ghana. The three-phase school and incubator program were founded in 2008 by Jørn Lyseggen to provide training, investment, and mentoring for aspiring technology entrepreneurs with the goal of creating globally successful companies that create wealth and jobs locally in Africa.
Coinbase is a digital currency exchange headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States. They broker exchanges of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, Tezos, and many others, with fiat currencies in approximately 32 countries, and bitcoin transactions and storage in 190 countries worldwide.
Charles Shrem IV is an American entrepreneur and bitcoin advocate. He co-founded the now-defunct startup company BitInstant, and is a founding member of the Bitcoin Foundation. In 2014 he was sentenced to two years in prison for aiding and abetting the operation of an unlicensed money-transmitting business related to the Silk Road marketplace. He was released from prison in 2016. In 2017, he joined Jaxx and served as its chief operating officer, and founded cryptocurrency advisory CryptoIQ.
Circle is a peer-to-peer payments technology company. It was founded by Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville in October 2013. Circle's mobile payment platform, Circle Pay, allows users to hold, send, and receive traditional fiat currencies. In September 2015, Circle received the first BitLicense issued from the New York State Department of Financial Services. In April 2016, the British government approved the first virtual currency licensure to Circle. Circle is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.
Stellar is an open source, decentralized protocol for digital currency to fiat money transfers which allows cross-border transactions between any pair of currencies. The Stellar protocol is supported by a 501(c)3 nonprofit, the Stellar Development Foundation.
Finserve Africa Limited is a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in Kenya. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Equity Group Holdings and is using the Airtel Kenya network as its carrier.
A blockchain, originally block chain, is a growing list of records, called blocks, that are linked using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data.
WorldRemit is an online money transfer business that provides international money transfer services in more than 50 countries. It was founded in 2010 by Ismail Ahmed, Catherine Wines, and Richard Igoe. As of 2018, WorldRemit had around 3 million users. Its primary competitors include Remitly and TransferWise.
Blockstream is a blockchain technology company led by co-founder Dr. Adam Back, headquartered in Victoria, Canada, with offices and staff worldwide. The company develops a range of products and services for the storage and transfer of Bitcoin and other digital assets.
M-Kopa is a Kenyan solar energy company. Headquartered in Nairobi, the company has pioneered and built one of the world's most advanced Pay-As-You-Go platforms to upgrade millions of lives in East Africa M-Kopa was launched commercially in 2012.
Transfast is an international money transfer and cross-border payments company headquartered in New York, with additional offices in India, the UAE, and the Philippines. Transfast is owned by Mastercard. The company is a provider of multi-currency, cross-border payments services for consumers and businesses around the world. Remittances are processed through its wholly owned direct-to-bank network, and the company offers 200,000 cash payout points across 120 countries.
OnLine eXchange also known as OLX Group is a Dutch-domiciled online marketplace headquartered in Amsterdam, and owned by Prosus, the international assets division of Naspers, founded in 2006 and operating in 45 countries.
Jed McCaleb is an American banker, programmer and entrepreneur. He is a co-founder and the CTO of Stellar. Prior to co-founding Stellar, McCaleb founded and served as the CTO of the company Ripple until 2013. McCaleb is also known for creating the Mt. Gox, and the peer-to-peer eDonkey and Overnet networks as well as the eDonkey2000 application.
VugaPay is a cross-platform payment service owned by Vuga Ltd, a Rwandan company. It allows businesses and users to transfer money across major payment systems, including credit card networks, mobile money and Bitcoin via an API, USSD interface, a mobile phone app or web interface. It processed over 5 million transactions in 2016. As of December 2016, VugaPay offers instant payments to and from 40 different mobile money networks/carriers in Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Niger, Malawi, Congo DR, Ghana,Tanzania and Zambia.
BitMari is a payment platform that claims to significantly lower the cost and increases the speed of remittance payments throughout the African Diaspora using Bitcoin. Founded in 2015 by Sinclair Skinner and Christopher Mapondera, BitMari is the only Blockchain startup to receive an international license to use Bitcoin for remittances from a Central Bank.
Daniel Larimer is a software programmer and cryptocurrency entrepreneur. Larimer created the cryptocurrency platform BitShares, co-founded the blockchain Steem, and is currently CTO of Block.one, a company involved with the development of EOS. Larimer was also the creator of the DPOS consensus algorithm and Graphene technology. In February 2018, Forbes estimated Larimer's net worth between $600 to $700 million.
Topyster Muga, nêe, Namasaka is a Kenyan telecommunication and fintech specialist,who is currently serving as the Chief Executive and Founder of Prosper App. Before launching her own venture in July 2020, her immediate former role was Senior Director of Financial Inclusion Africa, at Visa Inc., based in Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya. Prior to that, she headed Airtel Money in Kenya.
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