The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has confirmed ready plans to expand its remittance services across sub-Saharan Africa.
In an October 25 announcement, SDF confirmed continuing plans to establish remittance services, with the organization now incorporating USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin to facilitate and simplify the new remittances between Europe and the African continent.
Jointly, the Stellar affiliates also announced that Flutterwave, a global payments technology firm, will facilitate the remittance services. But, the Flutterwave will work closely with Stellar’s principal EU payment affiliates, Tempo Payments, a renowned Paris-based money transfer operator.
While commenting about the new development, Olugbenga Agboola, CEO of Flutterwave, insisted that it was more expensive to send money to sub-Saharan Africa than any other region in the world. Nevertheless, he has vowed that his new partnership will expand the remittance network and “bring all-important, cost-effective money transfer services to African business owners.”
Since its inception, Flutterwave has processed more than 140 million transactions worth roughly $9 billion to date. In the process, the fintech firm has served over 290,000 businesses including, Uber, Booking.com, and Facebook.
Remarkably, the firm has already ventured into more than 33 African countries including, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa.
The SDF started targeting the African remittance market around a year ago, with the foundation joining hands with an East African payments firm ClickPesa in November 2021. Since then, ClickPesa has been providing on and off-ramps to the banking systems of Tanzania, Kenya, and Rwanda.
Unfortunately, Stellar and its affiliates have encountered stiff completion, with many notable payments firms such as WorldRemit, Azimo, Tranferwise, Payoneer, and Xoom operating in Africa.
The African region has attracted many crypto investors simply because of the massive population that remains unbanked. Moreover, most African residents highly depend on their relatives working abroad.
However, it is worth noting that remittances have plunged considerably amid the Covid 19 pandemic, with Africa.com stating that Nigeria experienced a 28% drop in 2021.
Africa.com also predicted that more remittance transfers would be conducted using cryptocurrency by 2025. The reports add that digital assets are likely to participate in Africa’s remittance market despite exclusionary policies from authorities.
Stellar and the newly incorporated stablecoin, Circle’s (USDC), are great affiliates since their successful integration in February 2021. USD Coin has recorded huge growth in 2021 so far. The stablecoin has soared by 733% since the start of the year to hit a market cap of $32.5 billion.
On the other hand, XLM, Stellar’s native token, also gained nearly 2.2% in the past 24 hours to trade at $0.386, according to CoinGecko. However, XLM is still down 56% from its January 2018 all-time high of $0.875.
