Leading African fintech becomes the latest Participating Financial Institution (PFI) on tbDEX, unlocking liquidity for B2C and B2B cross-border payments across 40 African countries and exploring new use cases leveraging decentralised identity.
TBD, part of Block, which is focused on creating open and decentralised technologies to connect the financial world, on Wednesday, announced that leading African fintech Chipper Cash has integrated with the tbDEX protocol to power cross-border payments and decentralised identity use cases for individuals and businesses on the African continent.
“Across Africa, the challenges of currency liquidity and access to global financial systems are palpable,” said Mike Brock, CEO of TBD.
“For these reasons, we are laser focused on building out the tbDEX ecosystem in Africa, which already includes Yellowcard, the largest and only licensed stablecoin on/off ramp on the African continent. Fast on the heels of our tbDEX SDK 1.0 release, adding Chipper Cash to our growing network will help to accelerate our work on global cross border payments and decentralized identity.”
As one of the largest fintechs in Africa, Chipper Cash already allows 5 million consumers to move money efficiently to over 21 African countries. And with over 1.2 million cards issued, Chipper’s integration represents the onboarding of one of the largest virtual card issuers in Africa.
“At Chipper Cash, we’re excited about the potential of tbDEX to revolutionize remittance flows into Africa,” said Maijid Moujaled, President and Co-Founder of Chipper Cash. “Remittances are a lifeline for many African families, but the costs of sending money to the continent remain among the highest globally. By plugging into an open protocol like tbDEX with numerous network participants, we believe we can, collectively as an industry, drive down these high costs and facilitate remittances in a more efficient, transparent, and compliant manner.”
Accelerating the path to financial inclusion for small businesses
While the initial collaboration will focus on enabling faster and less expensive consumer remittances, the two companies will also explore ways to empower small businesses. Chipper’s offerings for businesses already enable local and cross-border digital payments for underbanked SMEs across 40 different African countries, powering disbursements and collections from bank accounts, mobile money wallets and Chipper wallets.
Leveraging verifiable credentials and decentralised identifiers to enable trust
Chipper Cash will also leverage tbDEX to unlock trusted, compliant transactions with verifiable credentials (VCs) and decentralized identifiers (DIDs) in order to accelerate the onboarding and identity verification of consumers and small businesses.
“Chipper is also excited to collaborate with TBD on the trust frameworks and innovative credential designs that underpin every financial transaction on tbDEX,” Moujaled said. “The idea that we can have a standardized and streamlined way to verify our identity on the internet can help make the world feel a bit more inclusive.”
LEADERSHIP reports that tbDEX is an open messaging protocol that connects liquidity seekers with providers and equips all participants with a common language for facilitating transactions. Using open source protocols and common standards, it provides developers, enterprises, entrepreneurs, and governments with a universal language to facilitate transactions in a way that’s more inclusive, efficient and trustworthy.
The fintech noted that core to its innovation was the creation of a trust protocol for the exchange of value. This makes bitcoin, stablecoins, other digital assets – and even traditional fiat – more useful by creating a standardized way to establish trust and transact through an internet-native value exchange protocol.
tbDEX is architected on Web5 infrastructure, utilising decentralised technologies such as Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Credentials (VCs) to securely validate counterparty identity and trust, as well as helping to enable compliance with relevant laws and regulations across global jurisdictions.