Kenya’s Wapi Pay Raises $2.2 Million Pre-Seed for Cross-Border Payments Between Africa and Asia
According to the World Bank, it is more expensive to send money to sub-Saharan Africa than to any region in the world. It is also the most expensive region to send money from. In Q1 2020, people spent an average of 8.9% to send money to the region, much higher than the global average of 6.8%.
There’s much talk around sending money from Africa to the West, which has led to many startups using traditional (fiat) and nontraditional (crypto) means to facilitate cross-border payments between the two corridors. However, there’s little noise about the corridors between Africa and other regions like Latin America or Asia.
South Asia, for instance, has the lowest average remittance costs across all regions at 4.95% (these percentages are reported on a standard $200 transfer); therefore, it makes sense to tap into the opportunities the market presents. Wapi Pay, a Kenyan startup with offices in China and Singapore, is carrying out this play and has carved a market for itself by facilitating payments between both extreme remittance worlds of Africa and Asia.
Photo courtesy of Monito.
Source: TechCrunch (link opens in a new window)
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