South African Blockchain Payment Aggregator, Centbee in Fresh Funding

With funding from Calvin Ayre, founder of prominent bitcoin venture capital firm Ayre Ventures, Centbee, a South African platform for digital currency transfers on the Bitcoin network BSV, has concluded its pre-series A round at a $1 million valuation.

With Africa gaining significant attention as the next crypto frontier over the past year due to its underdeveloped infrastructure and severely fragmented digital payments ecosystem, investors are increasingly viewing the region as a potent market for cryptocurrencies and crypto-based remittance payments.

Unsurprisingly, more African people use digital payment services than in any other continent. While many economies, such as those in Europe and the US, encourage the use of cards, in Africa, many diverse solutions—led by various types of mobile money, while cash is also prevalent—take their place. On the other hand, less than 3% of transactions are made using a card.

The payments industry in Africa is extremely fragmented and lacks a dominant payment method or supplier. Different payment options are preferred by various people and nations. The biggest challenge for businesses is that accepting payments through all of the popular methods on the market may be quite time-consuming and expensive, especially if they operate in several different countries.

With the help of the cross-border remittances service Minit Money, clients of Centbee can transfer digital currency payments to friends and family members who live abroad. The features roadmap has recently been expanded. The ChatPay feature from Centbee functions as an “in-wallet chat application” for Minit Money.

Centbee announced last year that UK residents could use the Blockchain to send virtual currency to their families in Africa. This was facilitated by the startup’s partnership with MTN, Vodafone, Tigo, and Airtel’s mobile money wallet and several other financial institutions in Africa. According to co-CEO Lorien Gamaroff, the service is available in countries including Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, and Benin.

Making it simple to buy, send, and spend money from a mobile phone is made easier with the new remittance feature in Centbee wallet. Over the past few months, Centbee has experienced phenomenal growth in its Value-Added Services catalog, which features hundreds of international brands. Sales volumes and in-app usage have been greatly boosted by the launch of Centbee Honey, a blockchain-based loyalty program that gives their 50,000 clients quick, ready-to-spend digital cash incentives in their Centbee wallets.

Through a different decentralized finance software, the business also provides a number of digital cash products and services. The BSV ledger is used by Centbee to record all remittance transactions permanently. Due to a use case that is motivated by usefulness rather than currency speculation, it is referred to be a “real peer-to-peer” electronic cash system for sending Bitcoin.