Podcast; Use Cases for Bitcoin in Africa

In an online podcast interview with the Kenyan Wallstreet, Modibe Matsepane, the Community Coordinator for Africa at Paxful, shared his insights on the use cases of Bitcoin that are most suited for the African continent.

Established in 2015, Paxful enables users to trade Bitcoin with each other using more than 355 payment methods including mobile money, bank transfers, and many more.

The use cases that were highlighted as being best suited to serve the African marketplace are as follows, indexed by the timestamp they appear in the podcast:

6:20 – International Money Remittances

Remittances are very big in Africa, particularly when Africans in the diaspora want to send money back home. With most traditional remittance channels, the remittance costs are quite high and may take up to a few days to process. With Bitcoin, remittance costs have been significantly reduced and transaction time is almost instantaneous.

13:34 – An Alternative Investment Asset for Wealth Preservation

The year 2020 has seen many currencies depreciate in value, especially in emerging market economies. This has led to a shift in investor preferences from currencies to alternative assets such as gold and cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

16:05 – Freelancer Payments

A large proportion of young people in African countries have turned to doing online freelancing jobs as an alternative income stream in recent years. Part of the challenge with online freelancing comes when devising a suitable channel for receiving payments from clients located in different parts of the globe. Peer-to-peer cryptocurrency marketplaces are stepping in to fill this gap and provide an affordable and quick payment platform for the online freelancers. Paxful is organizing a webinar with Freelancer Kenya on Wednesday 23rd August at 2:00 pm EAT to discuss this topic.

18:48 – E-commerce Payments

For people with online businesses, Bitcoin provides a channel through which they can receive payments from their customers. This is especially useful to nascent business owners who do not have access to formalized payment channels for their online sales.

19:53 – Donations and Philanthropy Work

Finally, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can also be used to donate to charitable projects happening in any part of the world. This has enabled project implementors and facilitators to access funds from a global pool of potential donors and contributors. Paxful is currently undertaking a project to build 100 schools in Africa using the #BuiltWithBitcoin initiative. One of the schools is being built in Machakos county here in Kenya.

Key Takeaways from the episode

Cryptocurrencies have evolved significantly over the years, constantly devising new use cases to suit the diverse needs of the dynamic 21st-century African marketplace.