Afriex launched amongst an explosion of fintech companies targeting underserved, and often overlooked, consumers in Africa.
... [+]When Tope Alabi moved back to Nigeria in 2019 after 20 years in the U.S., he knew he wanted to start a company applying what he learned working at blockchain consultant Consensys. He and future cofounder John Obirije started testing a number of ideas ranging from a hip hop chat bot to a trivia game — all of which failed.
They decided to create a money transfer system that utilized blockchain to enable users to send funds by converting them into stablecoins — which are cryptocurrencies backed by reserve assets. This process makes the transaction free and quicker than an existing service like Wise which charges a 6.45% fee and can take a few days to process. They launched the service, Afriex, in 2019 and the traction was instant. “Things took off from there,” Alabi tells.
Afriex processes more than $5 million in monthly transfers, Wise moves an average of £4 billion a month for comparison, but Afriex has grown its customer base by 500% in the last six months with half of its active users using the platform more than once a week. The startup makes money by arbitraging the currency and crypto exchange rates when a customer transacts. Afriex declined to share its revenue. It raised a $1.
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