NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Monday, July 27, 2015

Efforts to get Bitcoin off the ground in Africa received a boost this week as BitX announced it has raised $4 million in funding.

Africa is a market ripe for Bitcoin: it’s underserved by financial institutions due to the high cost of having a physical presence like ATMs, bank branches and remittance offices, according Werner van Rooyen, head of business development and growth at BitX.

The company was founded in 2013 and runs a bitcoin exchange and provides wallets for the cryptocurrency. Its headquarters are in Singapore and it has offices South Africa, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia and Nigeria. The Series A funding round was led by South Africa’s Naspers Group.

“There’s a lot of talk in finance of ’the next billion’ and a big part of this next billion will come out of Africa,” Werner said via email. “Bitcoin is particularly great when you have low-value payments since there isn’t a fixed minimum fee that gets charged to send it.”