19 May VIDEO: The Evolution of African eCommerce Payment Methods. What can we expect to see in the future of African Payments?
Evolving payment types? Stablecoins are a perfect development for SSA. SSA’s alternative currency is USD and to have a stablecoin that is a digital programmable representation of the dollar and can be traded and transmitted cross border makes perfect sense for easy adoption. This is until the already high per capita holders of bitcoin, particularly South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana move from speculation to a medium of exchange. Easy access to stablecoins and use of other digital currencies will be further catalysed by the rapid expansion of leading exchanges like Luno and Binance to these key territories for eCommerce expansion.. This will start with use for remittances and then people will realise that they can use it for making local and international payments. These exchange expansions are mapping to eCommerce-rich countries including Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Zambia and Uganda. West, East and Southern Africa are cooperating to forge links between central bank systems which will facilitate more convenient and faster settlement times and RTGS. Central banks are working on a number of initiatives to facilitate in-country interoperability between payment systems like banks and alternative payment methods like mobile money. Nigeria is a really good example of a well integrated payment system making it possible to transfer instantaneously from for eg a mobile money account to another mobile money account or to a bank account. Although there has been lower levels of interest from African countries, there are signs of African central banks investigating and calling for expressions of interest on implementation of CBDCs. There is also the possibility that China, a world leader on CBDCs works with strategic African trading partners to create CBDCs for instant transfers between them in order to get away from the dollar. The card associations are working with mobile money providers to turn them into virtual cards which bring mobile money systems into the global payment rails and facilitating payments globally cross border. In its early phases, digital currency projects like Dash and Stellar . . learnings from Venezuela and Argentina Our services include: