The African financial scene is characterized by a plethora of challenges even with the increasing amount of technology gracing the scene every day. These challenges have, to a large extent been mitigated by the advent of cryptocurrencies and their related systems. Cryptocurrencies in their own little and seemingly inconsequential way have helped to narrow the financial gap in Africa by bringing banking and payment services closer to people by creating safer ways to save and trade, making seamless cross-border payments attainable.
Cryptocurrencies in spite of being a messiah has been frowned out by a handful of governments around Africa, Nigeria inclusive, and around the world. In Nigeria, for example, cryptocurrencies are banned but people have found ways around the ban and continue to use cryptocurrencies for making payments, storing wealth, etc. Cryptocurrencies, before problems with governments, had issues with adoption. Cryptocurrency still felt like mathematical jargon to a handful of the population. With the ban in some areas in Africa, the already suffering crypto-economy could suffer more as a result of the low rate of adoption, but this is where cryptocurrency startup Payourse comes in…
Payourse is one of the many cryptocurrency startups that are going against all odds to offer cryptocurrency services and products in a bid to increase the adoption of cryptocurrency in Africa. Based in Lagos, Payourse has raised $600,000 in a pre-seed round. Payourse is a blockchain startup that offers user-friendly products and tools and its main goal is to increase crypto adoption in Africa.
The startup plans on using the fund to fuel operations aimed at increasing crypto adoption in Africa, expand into new African markets, scale its products and hire new talents/ build new teams. The pre-seed funding round saw the participation of mostly angel investors including Michael Ugwu, one of Africa’s biggest NFT collectors. Other angel investors that participated in the round include Marek Olszewski and Rene Reinsberg – co-founders of CELO, Kola Aina and Oluwatobi Anisere. Flori Ventures, Voltron Capital and Allegory Capital were also part of the funding round.
Payourse was founded by Bashir Aminu and John Anisere in September 2019 and is one of the fastest-growing crypto enterprises to look out for in Africa. The startup is helping to solve the challenges of accessibility and adoption by making core infrastructure and tools that’ll help African businesses build their crypto products, available.
One big question that may be on your mind is how Payourss is thriving or has managed to remain on its feet especially because of the still existing ban on cryptocurrencies.
While other cryptocurrency platforms such as Binance, Paxful and other Nigerian brands have adopted the peer-to-peer model and have made it better over the past few months, Payourse surprisingly isn’t using this “easy way out”. It employs the services of liquidity partners that provide fiat currencies like Nigeria’s Naira (liquidity) for Payourse users when they initiate a transaction.
Payourse claims to have 15,000 percent growth across all metrics and is maintaining a 150 percent month-on-month growth rate.
Speaking on investing in Payourse, Olumide Soyombo, Managing Partner at Voltron Capital said that “We are excited to back the Payourse mission as we believe this team is a super technical team with subject matter expertise. The team is solving an important problem by providing the key infrastructure for Africans and African businesses to adopt crypto.”
Payourse is looking at venturing into Ghana and Kenya after successfully rooting itself in the “difficult” Nigerian crypto market.
Ibhadojemu Lucky Emmanuel is a graduate of Education and Economics from the University of Benin. He has a passion for tech and business and has been writing professionally for over a period of five years. He's written across various topics and segments and knew tech-business was it when he first stumbled on it. He has a great passion for music and arts, and wants to visit as many countries as he can someday.
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