06 Sep Is Libra Likely To Be Supported By African Payment Gateways For Online Payment Across Africa?

Libra is an interesting new entrant to the online payments, backed by an incredibly powerful distribution network. Facebook has more than 200m users on the African continent, and just imagine with the kind of fiat and cross-border complexities, how a universal coin of this nature could achieve widespread adoption amongst consumers and businesses locally and internationally. 

It is likely that Libra, their wallet Calibra, and Facebook will come up against some resistance from governments, many of whom can be quite controlling when it comes to forex and cross-border transactions. As some have put it, will Libra ever get out of the starting gate as a result of the pushback in terms of governments and legislation?

A high level for those who are new to Libra and how it works, the Libra coin is backed by a basket of real-world assets (including bank deposits and short-term government securities), and transaction reconciliation would take place as a result of a permissioned system of chosen nodes including mega-payment companies across the world like Visa, PayPal and Stripe who have paid significant amounts of money to play this role. 

While conceptually, Libra and its wallet Calibra would completely transform payments and provide a much-needed change in terms of the fluidity of node-to-node and cross-border payments across Africa, it is centralised, and as such subject to the whims of government legislation and compliance  The jury is still out as to whether it would lead to an uncomfortable level of personal identity scrutiny, as opposed to decentralized currencies like bitcoin where transactions can take place pseudonymously.

So to go to the topic of whether Libra is likely to be supported by African Payment Gateways for online payments of eCommerce goods and services across Africa.  In my opinion it is still a long way off becoming mainstream and requiring adding to the online payment checkout for multinational eCommerce companies entering the African market.

At African Payment Solutions, we are immersed in research and understanding of how the online payments market, particularly in Africa is evolving.  Whilst we are of the opinion that Africa with its mobile first, and low financially included population, will result in fast paced payment development, adoption will take some time, and we will be the first to include, advise of, and add popular online payment capability for our eCommerce merchants.

So if you are looking for a 20 year experienced team and leading African Payment Gateway including card acquiring and mobile payment collection for your eCommerce business expanding across Africa then contact us now.