- To compete against global market rivals, Afriex, a Nigerian startup, secured $1.2 million from several funders
- Y Combinator, Launch Africa, SoftBank Opportunity Fund, A$AP Capital, Future Africa, eight others supported with capital
- Afriex founder, Temitope Alabi, plans to build the largest cryptocurrency-backed remittance in the world through African markets
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Nigerian startup, Afriex, has raised $1.2 million from thirteen venture capitals to expand its operation within the country. The cryptocurrency-backed remittance firm plans to use the capital to strengthen its position in the emerging markets.
Afriex enables users to transfer funds or cryptocurrency through its platforms across various markets. Currently, the firm founded by Temitope Alabi operates in Nigeria, United States, Ghana, Kenya and Uganda where users conduct remittance payments with zero-fee.
In order to remain competitive in a market that has Western Union and Wise (formerly Transferwise), Afriex raised funds from Y Combinator, Launch Africa and SoftBank Opportunity Fund, Disrupt Africa reported.
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Other participants in the fundraising are Future Africa, Brightstone VC, Russell Smith, Mandela Dixon, Processus Capital, Uncommon Ventures, A$AP Capital, Furquan Rydhan, Precursor Ventures, Ivernet Holdings, and Andrea Vaccari.
Speaking on the role of Afriex in the remittance market, Alabi said whenever he goes home, he was always noting down the problem Nigeria had and how he could solve them. One of the issues is money transfer between diaspora and Africa.
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He said:
“We would go back home every two years and even then I would always take note of what was missing and what could be improved."“I would find myself having to pay for foreign expenses with money that was sitting in a US bank account. Traditional remittance companies were so slow and expensive that I knew I could do it better with crypto."
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“Remittance is the best and most important use case for crypto. Our goal is to build the world’s largest remittance company starting with emerging markets.”He further explained that the company focuses on dollar and cryptocurrency in order to avoid devaluation of some currencies:
“We don’t have to hold inflationary currencies – we can just hold USD and crypto allows us to source better exchange rates."Meanwhile, Legit.ng had earlier reported that the monetary policy committee of the Central Bank of Nigeria told deposit money banks to cut their rising non-performing loans which is 6.3%.
The financial policymaker also directed Nigerian lenders to increase the number of loans approved despite the hike in default loans.
Fakoyejo Olalekan is a Business and Financial Journalist with over three years of experience in covering finance and business activities within Nigeria and offshore. Prior to joining Legit.ng, he worked at Nairametrics where he wrote financial and investment analysis articles. Olalekan is a resourceful and result-driven journalist with a track record for conducting extensive research and interviews to produce articles that provide different perspectives to market activities.
Source: Legit.ng
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