The Chief Executive Officer of Lazerpay, a cross-border payment company, Mr. Emmanuel Njoku, has said the multiplicity of currencies across African countries is hindering the growth of commerce across the continent. According to the World Bank, there are approximately 41 currencies serving Africa’s 54 countries.
Njoku said this fragmentation has over time made moving money across borders difficult, effectively preventing businesses from expanding their reach. He noted that businesses in Africa are constrained by the difficulty in accepting payments from their customers abroad because it takes about 3 – 5 days for the funds to settle in local bank accounts, while sometimes, it can even take up to 4 weeks.
What the Lazerpay CEO is saying
Speaking in an interview with Nairametrics, Njoku said: “Africa is forecast to surpass half a billion e-commerce users by 2025. The continent also leads mobile device web traffic generation, with 69% of its total web traffic consisting of mobile internet users as of 2021 and it is forecast to be an almost exclusively mobile-based market by 2040. Yet, there is still a gap in commerce between countries on the continent largely due to differences in currencies.”
“Africans in the diaspora are constantly looking for cost-effective platforms to send money back home. With most cross-border remittances today, it is difficult to predict settlement times; same-day payments are rare, costs are always higher and transparency around these costs is often non-existence.
“This is why we created a blockchain-powered solution to enable businesses to accept payments from anywhere in the world using stablecoins. Our API-centric solution allows developers to integrate crypto payments into their platforms easily. In addition to our APIs and SDK offerings for white-label and checkout integration, we also offer no-code solutions like payment links, QR codes, and payment buttons.
“We’ve also made it easy for e-commerce merchants to accept payments in crypto on their WordPress-based platforms using our WordPress plugins. Our new Payouts product enables businesses to payout their stablecoins or local currencies to their crypto wallets, bank accounts, or mobile money accounts in over 150 countries. Merchants can programmatically send instant payouts to their suppliers, or service providers around the world,” he added.
