Bitcoin Startups BitPesa and Bitbond Deliver P2P Loans for African Businesses

Thursday, April 13, 2017

Bitcoin startups BitPesa and Bitbond, based in Africa and Germany respectively, have announced a new initiative to bring financing options to businesses in Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda.

The partnership sees BitPesa, a pan-African bitcoin payments startup that initially launched in Kenya in 2013 as the continent’s first bitcoin company, with Bitbond, a prominent Berlin-based peer-to-peer crowdlending platform for small and medium-sized enterprises globally, while the public Bitcoin blockchain for payment processing.

Bitbond claims to have processed over 1,6000 loans worth $1.2 million since its launch, with some 75,000 registered users from 120 countries. The platform distinguishes itself as “the first global marketplace lending platform for small business loans” by leveraging bitcoin as a technology and payment network.

As a successful bitcoin startup, BitPesa is a company that enables African users to buy and sell local African currencies through bitcoin, with settlements directly transacting to and from bank accounts and mobile money accounts in Africa. BitPesa’s payments rail enables near-instant and cheap transfers between East, Central and West African countries. Beyond the continent, BitPesa uses bitcoin to exchange African currencies into global currencies and vice-versa, without the need to use the US dollar as a benchmark currency.

Source: CryptoCoinsNews (link opens in a new window)

Categories
Technology
Tags
digital payments, financial inclusion, fintech