#Buy vouchers with crypto in Nigeria

[virtualdollarcards]

Nigerian Digital Wallet: A Complete Introduction

A Nigeria digital wallet is a type of online financial account that allows users to store and spend money electronically. It's similar to a regular bank account, but it's also mobile-based and can be used to pay for goods and services in Nigeria and across the world.

Benefits of using a Nigerian digital wallet include the convenience of having all your finances in one place as well as the ability to easily transfer money between different accounts. Additionally, digital wallets are often secured by encryption technology, which makes them ideal for storing sensitive information.

If you're looking to invest in cryptocurrencies, then a Nigerian digital wallet is the best option for you. A Nigerian digital wallet is a secure way to store and use cryptocurrencies.

Nigeria digital wallets: There are a few things to keep in mind.

Make sure that it's safe and reliable.

Choose one that has good customer service.

Make sure that the exchange rate is fair.

How to buy and sell cryptocurrencies in Nigeria

When selling cryptocurrencies, it's important to understand how market conditions work in order to maximize profits. Try not to panic if the price goes down—cryptocurrency prices are always volatile! Simply wait for the price of your coin to rise slightly again before selling it off. And remember: don't keep all of your eggs in one basket—diversify your holdings by investing in several different types of cryptocurrency!

These days, cryptocurrencies are a major topic, and for good reason. They offer a distinctive, quick, and secure method of conducting transactions. However, not everyone is familiar with the steps involved in purchasing and trading cryptocurrencies. By providing basic instructions on where to buy and sell USDT in Nigeria, make sure you're selling USDT at a good price to maximize your commission. Once you've sold USDT, be sure to store it safely offline to prevent further theft or loss.

Fund Dollar Card with Crypto

The fund dollar card with crypto is directly linked to digital wallets where your cryptocurrencies are stored. When you make a purchase, the funds are transferred immediately from your wallet to the merchant's account. There is no need for additional fees or charges like those associated with traditional bank transfers.

The platform offers a user-friendly interface, making it easy to find and buy products from around the web. Plus, there are no hidden fees or charges—everything is transparent and simple.

What's more, using Fund Dollar Cards also gives you access to exclusive discounts and rewards! Why not try out this innovative way of spending your crypto today?

How To Spend Crypto In Nigeria

Cryptocurrency is quickly becoming a popular form of currency all over the world. However, not everyone is aware of how to spend it in Nigeria. Here are some tips on how to spend your crypto in Nigeria:

Start by finding an exchange that allows you to buy and sell cryptocurrencies. You can use this platform to easily store and trade your coins without having to worry about losing them or dealing with any security issues.

Once you have access to your cryptocurrency, explore all the different ways you can use it! There are plenty of merchants who accept digital currencies as payment, so find one that interests you and start spending!

Be prepared for fluctuations in prices; just like anything else valuable, cryptocurrencies aren't immune from price changes. So be patient while waiting for prices to stabilize before making any major investments.

Conclusion:

When it comes to spending your crypto in Nigeria, you have a lot of options. However, these options might vary depending on the payment method and platform that are used to manage the transaction. Through this article, we hope we managed to educate you on how to spend crypto and make it easy for everyone!

[thesecrettimes]

Nigerian Crypto Users and Enthusiasts Dismiss 100% BTC Premium Claims

Nigerian blockchain and crypto enthusiasts have said recent reports suggesting that local residents are paying a premium of almost 100% on top of the prevailing price of bitcoin “are totally false.” They argue that such reports are based on a claim that is being propagated by persons who do not fully grasp the dynamics in the country and should therefore be ignored.

Supposed 100% BTC Premium Generates Global Interest

Some Nigerian crypto and blockchain users and enthusiasts have said recent reports suggesting that the value of BTC on local crypto exchanges is nearly double the prevailing U.S. dollar value are totally false. According to the users, the reports are based on tweets posted by social media users who do not fully understand how Nigerian residents use local crypto exchange platforms. Look how much Nigerians are paying for #Bitcoin right now on @paxful pic.twitter.com/WxAam58mWR — 🧡NEEDcreations is stacking sats & jamming to EDM (@NEEDcreations) January 30, 2023 The pushback by the Nigerian enthusiasts and influencers came as the claim, which was reportedly sparked by a single tweet, continues to generate interest among bitcoiners. In their initial tweet thread, the user shared a screenshot which suggested that Nigerians are buying one BTC on the peer-to-peer platform Paxful at $47,924. The user also claimed that the recent cash withdrawal restrictions imposed by the Nigerian central bank have seen many residents swap their naira for BTC. This has helped push up the crypto asset’s U.S. dollar value, the user argued. However, in his reaction to the tweet and the subsequent media reports, Benjamin Eseoghene, the CEO of local crypto exchange Roqqu, told Bitcoin.com News that while price discrepancies do exist, it is simply not true that bitcoin is trading above $47,000 in Nigeria. “This is totally false, we’re trading at normal price, tho there’s some speculation around the crash of dollar rate after the general elections, maybe by then there can be some premium, but likely nowhere near 100%,” Eseoghene insisted. The Roqqu CEO also suggested that some of the social media users propagating this claim are only doing so to sell a certain narrative.

False Representation

Meanwhile, on Twitter, some Nigerian users insisted that the widely circulating screenshot is misleading and that no one is buying the crypto at over $47,000. Others, like Nathaniel Luz, an author and crypto advocate, bemoaned how a single tweet can easily be used to spread “half-truths and one-sided stories.” Nigerians are paying 48k for one #Bitcoin and you are waiting for 10k in your 1st world luxury surroundings watching Netflix. Ya, sure, you are the smart one. — John W. Creasy (💫☝️) (@21milinfinity) January 30, 2023 Luz also said the persons using BTC values on Paxful to propagate the 100% premium claims do not understand how Nigerians use the P2P (peer-to-peer) platform. “This is not even the price on Paxful. I was the Product Manager in charge of Payment Methods at Paxful. The PM here is ‘Game Items’ not fiat money. Game items mean I want to exchange a FIFA 23 voucher for BTC. You get? It’s a false representation,” Luz said. According to Luz, there is no crypto exchange where Nigerians pay a premium of 20% on the price of BTC. Register your email here to get a weekly update on African news sent to your inbox: What are your thoughts on this story? Let us know what you think in the comments section below. Read the full article

[xnewsio-blog]

Nigerians Can Purchase BTC Using Cash from ATMs and Stores That Accept Naira

Nigeria is the place where BTC draws more attention than any other place. Nigerians BTC, Africa's largest economy, is driven by financial services, oil exports, the information technology sector, and expanding manufacturing.  As per the Internet World Stats' latest data, over 123 million Nigerians have access to the web. That's why making use of an online platform to acquire cryptocurrencies isn't an issue for them. Now that opportunities to acquire bitcoin over the internet have been increasing, so are the people that are taking advantage of them. The Nigeria Bitcoin Community portal gives a list of the number of broker and trading platforms available in the country such as Luno, Quidax, Alphabits, Blockvila, and peer-to-peer exchanges like Paxful, Remitano, Coindirect, Buy Coins, Localbitcoins and Coincola. Bitcoin.com Local is also available to Nigerians. Other options include Redimit, Cryset, Instant gold. However, purchasing online requires the buyer to pay electronically by bank transfers or credit cards, also not all P2P platforms allow in-person cash trades. The real issue arises here. When you have access to a bank account, it doesn't mean you have a bank account as well. Around half of Nigeria's citizens don't have a bank account, and along with the people who are underbanked, they form a majority of almost two thirds. As per the World Bank data, only around 40% of Nigerian adults have an account with some financial institution or a mobile money provider. The 2018 Global Findex report stated that one in 10 unbanked Nigerians gets their wages in cash; it also includes four millions of people who have a mobile phone. Millions of Nigerians would benefit from the financial freedom that comes with decentralized digital money. Cash is omnipresent in this part of the world, and it's the only payment method that underprivileged people have access to. New opportunities that can enable buying bitcoin with paper money are emerging in Nigeria. The yellow card is a platform that offers tech-savvy Nigerians easy access to purchase cryptocurrencies online with bank transfer or ATM card to load the accounts with Naira and then pay for the digital coins that they want. It supports bitcoin core and dash and going to add bitcoin cash (BCH) and tether (USDT) soon. People who have access to only cash in their pockets can acquire crypto from a Yellow Card shop or from the platform's agents. For doing so, people need to buy a Yellow Card voucher from a merchant, and the voucher comes with a 16-digit code that can be redeemed in the mobile app.

Nigerians Get a Bitcoin ATM

Nigeria gets an operational BTC ATM. For security reasons, there are only a couple of dozen teller devices in the whole of Africa that supports cryptocurrencies. As per reports, Nigeria got its first BATM this year. The device was deployed by "Blockstale" in Dazey Lounge & Bar in Lagos in January. The company has delivered five more machines to deploy in Lagos by the end of the month and will move on to Abuja in the next quarter. Chief Executive Daniel Adekunle revealed that Blockstale ready to install more cryptocurrency ATMs across Nigeria and in neighboring countries. "Nigerians have trust issues, meaning we prefer to have direct interactions because we believe that this is safe, secure, and best practice to avoid loss of funds." He further states, "We operate in a cash-based economy even though our banks want us to go cashless. These ATMs serve as an on-ramp for users looking into cashing out their digital assets or having quick access to purchase digital assets with cash securely." Ezbitex global: A Hybrid Cryptocurrency Exchange And Payment Solution Provider! https://ezbitex.global/ Purchase digital currencies through Cerberex Exchange https://www.cerberex.exchange/ Read the full article

[joshuajacksonlyblog]

Nigerians Continue to Turn to Bitcoin When Established Financial Institutions Won’t Help

In Nigeria — where cryptocurrencies often underpin local economies — Bitcoin remains as popular as ever, despite a few shaky weeks elsewhere.

Nigeria is West Africa’s largest economy, and has the world’s third-largest Bitcoin holdings as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), behind Russia and New Zealand, according to Citigroup. This affinity with Bitcoin is related to the fact that blockchain-based payment systems drastically improve the ease of doing business in the country, helping liberate Nigerians sidelined by the global financial system.

Take Olaoluwa Samuel-Biyi, a 27-year-old entrepreneur. He first considered using cryptocurrencies when credit card firms and other established payment providers refused to partner with his global remittance company, SureRemit, deeming the venture too risky. “They said the markets were too high risk and that people could finance terrorism,” he told global news agency AFP. “It’s ridiculous.”

“It’s so hard to send money from Nigeria to Zimbabwe, or from the United States to Sudan,” he explained. Banks were “very tedious” and payment companies “generally exploitative,” he said. “There’s heavy discrimination, definitely. We have to go all around them to succeed.”

In time, Samuel-Biyi realized that cryptocurrencies offered a solution to his problem: So SureRemit developed its own virtual coin. The coins are used to buy vouchers, which may be used to purchase goods and pay bills at participating merchants in eight countries in Africa and the Middle East.

In January, SureRemit held its initial coin offering (ICO) — which sold out in just two days, garnering $7 million dollars for the company. The 500 million tokens, each worth two US cents, were snapped up by major cryptocurrency players, including Hashed, a leading crypto-fund based in South Korea. “We were expecting scam allegations,” said Samuel-Biyi, referring to Nigeria’s reputation for online financial fraud. “But the world really accepted it.”

It’s not surprising that SureRemit was conceived in Nigeria: Remittance flows in 2016 were worth $19 billion — more than 4% of GDP (worldwide, the remittance market was worth $429 billion in 2016, according to the World Bank). Sub-Saharan Africa has some of the highest remittance costs in the world, certainly the most expensive fees seen within the continent. Case in point: To send money from France to Mali incurs a 5% fee, a quarter of what it costs to send money from Nigeria to Mali.

Such high fees have for years forced Nigerians to find alternative, sometimes risky, ways to transfer money. “I remember back in 2004, E-gold (a defunct cryptocurrency) was the only option anyone in Nigeria had to make online payments,” said Tim Akinbo, the founder of Tanjalo, a Nigerian exchange where people can buy Bitcoin with the local naira currency. “There are still African countries cut off from international commerce online. Bitcoin is technology that allows financial inclusion.”

The post Nigerians Continue to Turn to Bitcoin When Established Financial Institutions Won’t Help appeared first on NewsBTC.

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[michaelbennettcrypto]

Nigerians Continue to Turn to Bitcoin When Established Financial Institutions Won’t Help

In Nigeria — where cryptocurrencies often underpin local economies — Bitcoin remains as popular as ever, despite a few shaky weeks elsewhere.

Nigeria is West Africa’s largest economy, and has the world’s third-largest Bitcoin holdings as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), behind Russia and New Zealand, according to Citigroup. This affinity with Bitcoin is related to the fact that blockchain-based payment systems drastically improve the ease of doing business in the country, helping liberate Nigerians sidelined by the global financial system.

Take Olaoluwa Samuel-Biyi, a 27-year-old entrepreneur. He first considered using cryptocurrencies when credit card firms and other established payment providers refused to partner with his global remittance company, SureRemit, deeming the venture too risky. “They said the markets were too high risk and that people could finance terrorism,” he told global news agency AFP. “It’s ridiculous.”

“It’s so hard to send money from Nigeria to Zimbabwe, or from the United States to Sudan,” he explained. Banks were “very tedious” and payment companies “generally exploitative,” he said. “There’s heavy discrimination, definitely. We have to go all around them to succeed.”

In time, Samuel-Biyi realized that cryptocurrencies offered a solution to his problem: So SureRemit developed its own virtual coin. The coins are used to buy vouchers, which may be used to purchase goods and pay bills at participating merchants in eight countries in Africa and the Middle East.

In January, SureRemit held its initial coin offering (ICO) — which sold out in just two days, garnering $7 million dollars for the company. The 500 million tokens, each worth two US cents, were snapped up by major cryptocurrency players, including Hashed, a leading crypto-fund based in South Korea. “We were expecting scam allegations,” said Samuel-Biyi, referring to Nigeria’s reputation for online financial fraud. “But the world really accepted it.”

It’s not surprising that SureRemit was conceived in Nigeria: Remittance flows in 2016 were worth $19 billion — more than 4% of GDP (worldwide, the remittance market was worth $429 billion in 2016, according to the World Bank). Sub-Saharan Africa has some of the highest remittance costs in the world, certainly the most expensive fees seen within the continent. Case in point: To send money from France to Mali incurs a 5% fee, a quarter of what it costs to send money from Nigeria to Mali.

Such high fees have for years forced Nigerians to find alternative, sometimes risky, ways to transfer money. “I remember back in 2004, E-gold (a defunct cryptocurrency) was the only option anyone in Nigeria had to make online payments,” said Tim Akinbo, the founder of Tanjalo, a Nigerian exchange where people can buy Bitcoin with the local naira currency. “There are still African countries cut off from international commerce online. Bitcoin is technology that allows financial inclusion.”

The post Nigerians Continue to Turn to Bitcoin When Established Financial Institutions Won’t Help appeared first on NewsBTC.

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[brettzjacksonblog]

Nigerians Continue to Turn to Bitcoin When Established Financial Institutions Won’t Help

In Nigeria — where cryptocurrencies often underpin local economies — Bitcoin remains as popular as ever, despite a few shaky weeks elsewhere.

Nigeria is West Africa’s largest economy, and has the world’s third-largest Bitcoin holdings as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), behind Russia and New Zealand, according to Citigroup. This affinity with Bitcoin is related to the fact that blockchain-based payment systems drastically improve the ease of doing business in the country, helping liberate Nigerians sidelined by the global financial system.

Take Olaoluwa Samuel-Biyi, a 27-year-old entrepreneur. He first considered using cryptocurrencies when credit card firms and other established payment providers refused to partner with his global remittance company, SureRemit, deeming the venture too risky. “They said the markets were too high risk and that people could finance terrorism,” he told global news agency AFP. “It’s ridiculous.”

“It’s so hard to send money from Nigeria to Zimbabwe, or from the United States to Sudan,” he explained. Banks were “very tedious” and payment companies “generally exploitative,” he said. “There’s heavy discrimination, definitely. We have to go all around them to succeed.”

In time, Samuel-Biyi realized that cryptocurrencies offered a solution to his problem: So SureRemit developed its own virtual coin. The coins are used to buy vouchers, which may be used to purchase goods and pay bills at participating merchants in eight countries in Africa and the Middle East.

In January, SureRemit held its initial coin offering (ICO) — which sold out in just two days, garnering $7 million dollars for the company. The 500 million tokens, each worth two US cents, were snapped up by major cryptocurrency players, including Hashed, a leading crypto-fund based in South Korea. “We were expecting scam allegations,” said Samuel-Biyi, referring to Nigeria’s reputation for online financial fraud. “But the world really accepted it.”

It’s not surprising that SureRemit was conceived in Nigeria: Remittance flows in 2016 were worth $19 billion — more than 4% of GDP (worldwide, the remittance market was worth $429 billion in 2016, according to the World Bank). Sub-Saharan Africa has some of the highest remittance costs in the world, certainly the most expensive fees seen within the continent. Case in point: To send money from France to Mali incurs a 5% fee, a quarter of what it costs to send money from Nigeria to Mali.

Such high fees have for years forced Nigerians to find alternative, sometimes risky, ways to transfer money. “I remember back in 2004, E-gold (a defunct cryptocurrency) was the only option anyone in Nigeria had to make online payments,” said Tim Akinbo, the founder of Tanjalo, a Nigerian exchange where people can buy Bitcoin with the local naira currency. “There are still African countries cut off from international commerce online. Bitcoin is technology that allows financial inclusion.”

The post Nigerians Continue to Turn to Bitcoin When Established Financial Institutions Won’t Help appeared first on NewsBTC.

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[coin-river-blog]

Remittances have become a lifeline for many people in Sub-Saharan Africa, but the cost of sending money via banks and money transfer operators remains punitively high. On average, it costs 9.3% (of value transferred) to send the equivalent of $200 to the region, the highest remittance rates anywhere on the planet, according to the new World Bank 2019 report. However, the cost drops dramatically by as much as 90% when money is sent through cryptocurrency-based fintech companies like Bitpesa.

Also read: Central Bank Digital Currencies Take Center Stage at IMF Spring Meetings

Banks Most Expensive Cash Transfer Agents

Africans working abroad last year sent $46 billion to support families in their home countries. The money is often used to pay for education, buy food and clothes, start a business, build a house and cover daily living costs. Money sent from overseas is a vital tool of survival for many families in Africa’s often unstable economies.

But too much of the money is being taken in transfer fees by financial companies. According to the World Bank, banks are the most expensive agents for sending money back to Africa at 10.2%, followed by money transfer operators at 7.7% and post offices at 5.5%. This is by far too costly when compared to the Sustainable Development Goals target of cutting financial transfer costs to within 3% of total transaction value by 2030.

Some people have now started to put their hopes in bitcoin-backed fiat remittances as a way of cutting fees and improving efficiency and speed during transfers. When American political science graduate Elizabeth Rossiello founded Bitpesa in 2013, the company initially focused on facilitating bitcoin-supported cash transfers between citizens of the U.K. and Kenya. However, Bitpesa now has operations in eight African countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda.

Stephany Zoo, head of marketing at Nairobi-based Bitpesa, told news.Bitcoin.com that the company helps people in Africa send or receive money from around the world at a fraction of the cost charged by traditional agents. Bitpesa also caters to global remittance companies using API services for payments to mobile money operators, as well as bank networks in the African countries in which it has a presence, she stated.

“We process our remittance payments with a blend of traditional and personal insurance such as pooling, as well as using cryptocurrency,” Zoo elaborated. “Our fees are 1 to 3% so it’s significantly lower than those mentioned in the World Bank report. A lot of our clients are money transfer operators that actually move the money and we are the underlying technology or software behind what they do as well as being their foreign exchange provider.”

Informal Cash Transfers

In September, Bitpesa signed a deal with Japanese company SBI Remit allowing people across Africa to make payments for cars, beauty products and electronic gadgets. Africans making overseas purchases deposit their local fiat currencies into Bitpesa’s bank account, after which the payments are sent on the BTC blockchain to SBI Remit, which in turn makes the final payments in Japan.

The entire process can be completed within a matter of hours, at about half of the usual transfer cost. Conventional banking methods take a few days to handle similar transactions, Bitpesa claims. The fiat to crypto deposit and transfer also applies to remittance services, only this time the funds go directly into the account of the person receiving the money. “[This] cuts out all the middlemen, saves on conversion and transfer fees, and can be done in just a few clicks,” Bitpesa says on its website.

The World Bank data does not capture the true value of the amount of money sent to Africa from abroad or from other African countries. Often, remittances flow through informal channels carried by friends, family members or by bus drivers across borders. That’s because sometimes the effort of sending cash through MTOs is just not worth the risk. To do so means revealing your identity by producing a passport, work permit or visa – documents which a number of migrant workers don’t have.

Likewise, some cryptocurrency-based remittances fly beneath the radar, with it being unnoticed that they are serving this purpose. For example, Uganda’s Coinpesa is primarily a crypto exchange and does “not directly engage in the remittance business,” according to chief executive officer Suleiman Murunga. “However, that does not mean that we are not processing trades that originated as a remittance,” he observed. Murunga noted how cryptocurrency-based remittances were hard to track on an exchange, but also highlighted how this characteristic could help lower transfer costs to around 2%, having eliminated the cost of conversion from crypto to fiat.

Transfers Powered by In-House Crypto Tokens

In Nigeria, Sure Remit charges between 0-2% for non-cash remittances. The company claims to host a network of hundreds of merchants throughout the world and uses an in-house token, RMT. Built on the ethereum blockchain, the token can be exchanged for a variety of services, such as to purchase and send vouchers, send airtime, pay bills and buy groceries. Instead of receiving cash, recipients in Nigeria get vouchers that they can use to obtain whatever services or goods they need.

Elsewhere in southern Africa, Wala utilizes its own digital coin called dala to help users send money, buy airtime and data, pay bills and school fees in a number of countries at no cost. Wala sits on top of banks’ existing infrastructure which “helps banks better serve their customers.” The South African company believes that “once people are digitally engaged, the cost of financial services will decrease.”

Now, as the Sub-Saharan African remittance market is expected to grow 4.2% in 2019 and 5.6% in 2020, according to the World Bank, Bitpesa’s Stephany Zoo is optimistic crypto-based remittances business will claim a share of the market, saying: “I think that to improve market share, [crypto money transfer firms] must work with companies that have hybrid infrastructure and are more digitally focused because it is more effective, faster and easier to hold accountable than other traditional routes of remittances.”

What do you think about the cost of remittances in Africa? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Bitpesa and World Bank.

Express yourself freely at Bitcoin.com’s user forums. We don’t censor on political grounds. Check forum.Bitcoin.com

Tags in this story

Africa, banks, Bitcoin, BitPesa, Cash transfers, Coinpesa, Cryptocurrency, Kenya, Money transfer operators, remittances, SBI Remit, Stephany Zoo, Suleiman Murunga, Sure Remit, Wala, World Bank

Jeffrey Gogo

Jeffrey Gogo is an award winning financial journalist based in Harare, Zimbabwe. A former deputy business editor with the Zimbabwe Herald, the country's biggest daily, Gogo has more than 15 years of wide-ranging experience covering Zimbabwe's financial markets, economy and company news. He first encountered bitcoin in 2014, and began covering cryptocurrency markets in 2017

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[cryptswahili]

Adoption: Uquid Users can now use XRP to pay for Electricity, Mobile top up and more

Ripple’s (XRP) has just received another major adoption from payment platform Uquid. According to an announcement on Uquid medium page, users can now use XRP for payment of electricity bills, mobile top-up, pay online bills, Food vouchers, PIN-less call, and other services on its platform.

Mobile users of 600 mobile networks in 150 countries can use XRP to top up their mobile phones airtime while users from Bangladesh, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Philippines, Qatar, and South Africa can pay for data bundles.

For electricity bills and insurance, only users from Indonesia are supported with for now, while users in El Salvador and Guatemala can use it to buy grocery vouchers. Users in Guatemala and Philipines can also use XRP to buy pharmacy vouchers while only the united states users are allowed to use it for PIN-less calls.

Nicaraguan users are the only ones who can pay for transportation with XRP while the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, India, Philippine can pay for TV subscriptions with the service.

Uquid is a platform for deposit, transfer, and withdrawal of e-currencies. It is taking the quality of its service to the next level by adopting the foremost remittance cryptocurrency XRP for payment of several services in hundreds of countries around the world.

This is another major step forward in bringing crypto adoption to the mainstream sectors and no blockchain project has done that more than Ripple. The company has been expanding its reach to provide seamless remittance services around the world to make funds transfer as easy as sending an email.

With this new adoption, users can easily pay for services to merchants and the move is sure to encourage crypto and blockchain adoption on a global scale. The services are available to selected countries and it’s just for the initial launch and more countries will be included as the possibility shows up.

Ripple’s native token XRP has been adopted by several merchants for settling payments around the world and is likely to keep expanding so, the question is what will be XRP’s next major adoption news?

The post Adoption: Uquid Users can now use XRP to pay for Electricity, Mobile top up and more appeared first on ZyCrypto.

[Telegram Channel | Original Article ]

[cryptobrief]

Ripple’s (XRP) has just received another major adoption from payment platform Uquid. According to an announcement on Uquid medium page, users can now use XRP for payment of electricity bills, mobile top-up, pay online bills, Food vouchers, PIN-less call, and other services on its platform.

Mobile users of 600 mobile networks in 150 countries can use XRP to top up their mobile phones airtime while users from Bangladesh, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Philippines, Qatar, and South Africa can pay for data bundles.

For electricity bills and insurance, only users from Indonesia are supported with for now, while users in El Salvador and Guatemala can use it to buy grocery vouchers. Users in Guatemala and Philipines can also use XRP to buy pharmacy vouchers while only the united states users are allowed to use it for PIN-less calls.

Nicaraguan users are the only ones who can pay for transportation with XRP while the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, India, Philippine can pay for TV subscriptions with the service.

Uquid is a platform for deposit, transfer, and withdrawal of e-currencies. It is taking the quality of its service to the next level by adopting the foremost remittance cryptocurrency XRP for payment of several services in hundreds of countries around the world.

This is another major step forward in bringing crypto adoption to the mainstream sectors and no blockchain project has done that more than Ripple. The company has been expanding its reach to provide seamless remittance services around the world to make funds transfer as easy as sending an email.

With this new adoption, users can easily pay for services to merchants and the move is sure to encourage crypto and blockchain adoption on a global scale. The services are available to selected countries and it’s just for the initial launch and more countries will be included as the possibility shows up.

Ripple’s native token XRP has been adopted by several merchants for settling payments around the world and is likely to keep expanding so, the question is what will be XRP’s next major adoption news?

The post Adoption: Uquid Users can now use XRP to pay for Electricity, Mobile top up and more appeared first on ZyCrypto.

[cryptochurp]

Nigerians Continue to Turn to Bitcoin When Established Financial Institutions Won’t Help

In Nigeria — where cryptocurrencies often underpin local economies — Bitcoin remains as popular as ever, despite a few shaky weeks elsewhere.

Nigeria is West Africa’s largest economy, and has the world’s third-largest Bitcoin holdings as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), behind Russia and New Zealand, according to Citigroup. This affinity with Bitcoin is related to the fact that blockchain-based payment systems drastically improve the ease of doing business in the country, helping liberate Nigerians sidelined by the global financial system.

Take Olaoluwa Samuel-Biyi, a 27-year-old entrepreneur. He first considered using cryptocurrencies when credit card firms and other established payment providers refused to partner with his global remittance company, SureRemit, deeming the venture too risky. “They said the markets were too high risk and that people could finance terrorism,” he told global news agency AFP. “It’s ridiculous.”

“It’s so hard to send money from Nigeria to Zimbabwe, or from the United States to Sudan,” he explained. Banks were “very tedious” and payment companies “generally exploitative,” he said. “There’s heavy discrimination, definitely. We have to go all around them to succeed.”

In time, Samuel-Biyi realized that cryptocurrencies offered a solution to his problem: So SureRemit developed its own virtual coin. The coins are used to buy vouchers, which may be used to purchase goods and pay bills at participating merchants in eight countries in Africa and the Middle East.

In January, SureRemit held its initial coin offering (ICO) — which sold out in just two days, garnering $7 million dollars for the company. The 500 million tokens, each worth two US cents, were snapped up by major cryptocurrency players, including Hashed, a leading crypto-fund based in South Korea. “We were expecting scam allegations,” said Samuel-Biyi, referring to Nigeria’s reputation for online financial fraud. “But the world really accepted it.”

It’s not surprising that SureRemit was conceived in Nigeria: Remittance flows in 2016 were worth $19 billion — more than 4% of GDP (worldwide, the remittance market was worth $429 billion in 2016, according to the World Bank). Sub-Saharan Africa has some of the highest remittance costs in the world, certainly the most expensive fees seen within the continent. Case in point: To send money from France to Mali incurs a 5% fee, a quarter of what it costs to send money from Nigeria to Mali.

Such high fees have for years forced Nigerians to find alternative, sometimes risky, ways to transfer money. “I remember back in 2004, E-gold (a defunct cryptocurrency) was the only option anyone in Nigeria had to make online payments,” said Tim Akinbo, the founder of Tanjalo, a Nigerian exchange where people can buy Bitcoin with the local naira currency. “There are still African countries cut off from international commerce online. Bitcoin is technology that allows financial inclusion.”

The post Nigerians Continue to Turn to Bitcoin When Established Financial Institutions Won’t Help appeared first on NewsBTC.

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Africa continues to dominate Google Trends search interest for “bitcoin,” but that has not translated into widespread adoption of cryptocurrency by users and businesses. Apart from opaque regulation and a lack of awareness, one of the major reasons for this failure has been the expansive use of mobile money on the continent.

Also read: Report: 87% of Crypto Exchanges May Be Falsifying Volume

Crypto Adoption Disappoints, Even as Africa Dominates Bitcoin Search Interest

According to Google Trends, the biggest search interest for bitcoin in the world is by potential investors from Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya – the three biggest cryptocurrency markets in Africa. That dominance is, however, predominantly limited to trading activities on exchanges. On a few occasions, bitcoin may be used as a means of payment, mostly to overseas suppliers.

But despite that world-leading interest, Africa still lags behind the rest of the world in everyday BTC use and adoption. The cryptocurrency has found it difficult to break the stranglehold of convenience, simplicity and efficiency that, like a magnet, draws millions of Africans to mobile money. The continent of 1.2 billion people is home to over 50 percent of the world’s mobile money services.

Google Trends chart for the keyword “bitcoin”

For example, with a basic telephone handset, one can send or receive money via SMS anywhere within a particular country, without the need of an internet connection. By comparison, you will need a smartphone and a secure internet connection to complete a cryptocurrency transaction. While internet use has risen sharply in the past 20 years, users from Africa account for just 10 percent of the global total, making the case for crypto on the continent even more cryptic. Also, erratic power supplies in many countries continue to impede the internet access on which cryptocurrency largely depends.

Beating Mobile Money at Its Own Game

Vin Armani, founder and CTO of Cointext, an internet-free wallet service that allows users to send or receive bitcoin cash (BCH) via SMS – just like mobile money – believes his service could rival mobile money in the continent. In Africa, Cointext is currently available only in South Africa, and it’s unclear how many people are actually using the service there. “We are preparing to make a major announcement that will give us global coverage (in every country),” Armani told news.Bitcoin.com.

“We’re currently working on an integration that will make us available for smartphones throughout Africa. We’re also working on SMS solutions for a few other African countries,” another official from Cointext explained separately.

Elisha Owusu Akyaw, a 17-year-old Ghanian crypto investor and influencer, has made a fortune investing in bitcoin. He believes that “Cryptocurrencies should probably integrate with mobile banking platforms.” Akyaw might have a point. The mobile money sensation has grown very deeply in African economics to the extent, perhaps, of defining its people.

“The power of financial technology to expand access to and use of accounts is demonstrated most persuasively in Sub-Saharan Africa,” the World Bank’s Global Findex Database detailed in its financial inclusion survey, which found 21 percent of adults on the continent now have a mobile money account. This is “nearly twice the share in 2014 and easily the highest of any region in the world.”

If that is not enough, cryptocurrencies will likely have to fight tooth and nail to gain any reasonable market share in the mobile money-dominated payment systems in Africa, a region often touted as the next frontier for virtual currencies. In Zimbabwe, publicly listed Econet Wireless controls 95 percent of the mobile money market share through its Ecocash platform. The seven year-old service is so successful that almost every government department depends on it for electronic payments.

With more than six million users in the Southern African country, Ecocash has processed over $23 billion worth of transactions since launch in September 2011. It boasts more than 32,000 agents (merchants) throughout Zimbabwe. This is the sort of entrenched competition that cryptocurrencies will have to contend with. There will be 725 million mobile phone subscribers in Africa by 2020, according to the GSM Association, who could either plug into crypto or mobile money.

Cumbersome Registration Processes Dissuade Crypto Use

Bernard Parah, a 26 year-old entrepreneur from Lagos, Nigeria, recognizes this challenge and opportunity. Two years ago, he founded Bitnob Quickserve, a platform that allows Africans to buy vouchers and reedem them for BTC without the need to complete KYC or AML procedures. Parah posits that one of the biggest hindrances to cryptocurrency adoption is the labyrinth of verifications required by exchanges at registration.

“We believe that [the service] will reduce the entry barrier for many people who want to try out bitcoins here in Africa,” Parah told news.Bitcoin.com. “Onboarding users needs to be made simpler. Many first time users give up at the point where they have to upload their personal identity details for verification.”

Parah also pointed to ease of use and the fear of loss of funds without recovery as stumbling blocks. “A bitcoin address looks like a foreign language to new users,” he notes. “Many people are not ready to be their own banks, they would rather settle for convenience over security,” said Parah, who reckons there’s need for more awareness and education about crypto.

A litany of fake bitcoin schemes have not helped the cryptocurrency cause either. In Uganda, for example, thousands of people have fallen victim to a number of Ponzi schemes, including the D9 Club, which promised to pay members in BTC. The scheme, now collapsed, masqueraded as a sports trading company, promising members hefty weekly payouts in bitcoin on initial investment of between $250 and $2,000. “Scams give Africa [and crypto] a bad name,” decried Chimezie Chuta, an IT specialist and bitcoin enthusiast from Nigeria. Regulation has, as always, been a sticky issue where bitcoin is concerned.

What do think about cryptocurrency adoption in Africa? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Tags in this story

adoption, Africa, Bernard Parah, Bitcoin, Bitnob Quickserve, Cointext, Cryptocurrency, Ecocash, Edonef Wireless, Elisha Owusu Akyaw, Internet use, Mobile banking, Mobile money, Vin Armani

Jeffrey Gogo

Jeffrey Gogo is an award winning financial journalist based in Harare, Zimbabwe. A former deputy business editor with the Zimbabwe Herald, the country's biggest daily, Gogo has more than 15 years of wide-ranging experience covering Zimbabwe's financial markets, economy and company news. He first encountered bitcoin in 2014, and began covering cryptocurrency markets in 2017

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