Bitcoin payment provider, Strike has partnered with African payments platform Bitnob to enable instant payments to Africa.
During a conference in Ghana, Strike CEO Jack Mallers announced that the Bitcoin ( BTC $16,948) payments company has partnered with the mobile app Bitnob to facilitate payments into Africa. On stage at AfroBitcoin, a Bitcoin conference in Accra, the capital of Ghana, Mallers made the announcement.
He stood next to Bitnob’s CEO from Nigeria, Bernard Parah, after a brief explanation of how it operates. The layer-2 payments network developed on top of Bitcoin, known as the Lightning Network, is used for money transfers into Africa.
According to Bitnob CEO Bernard Parah, the feature does not mandate that users use Bitcoin personally. Africans can presently use the no-transaction-fee functionality in Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria.
When compared to Wise, which offers remittance services, Western Union can charge up to 10% for money transactions. Direct deposits to recipients’ banks, mobile money accounts, or Bitnob accounts are made in dollars that are instantaneously changed into naira, cedi, or shillings (the respective currencies of Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya).
Local economies would experience a significant boost if cross-border payments were made into Africa using Bitcoin. In 2020, Nigeria alone received $17.2 billion in remittances from abroad.
The World Bank estimates that in 2020, each $200 transferred will cost the sender $17.8 (8.9%). That is equivalent to nearly $1.5 billion in foregone fees, or around Samoa’s GDP.
Nigerians all throughout the country would profit financially if remittance costs were eliminated utilizing Bitcoin payment rails. Ghana and Kenya both experience similar circumstances.
The United States is home to thousands of Ghanaians and Kenyans who frequently send money abroad. Remittances are one of the numerous reasons why the use of cryptocurrency in Africa has increased recently.
Mallers said that because it is an instant peer-to-peer payment, the whole experience was similar to PayPal’s Venmo app. A mobile software called Venmo enables seamless and immediate payments between customers in the United States.
The Lightning Network “just achieved dollars to Naira, Naira to dollars,” according to Mallers. Although the upgrade will eventually be made available to all of Africa, it is currently only available to Americans sending money to residents of the English-speaking African nations of Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria.
