Apps
Kenyan company Kipochi integrates M-PESA and Bitcoin – may create huge ripples in African Banking industry
Imagine a situation where your uncle in a remote village in Africa suddenly does not have to travel one day to reach a bank, only to find out that a monetary transfer from the diaspora has not yet arrived. A solution – with the Kipochi application, the remittances into Kenya and by extension Africa has a faster and cheaper way to reach even the most remote areas – villages with no banks or Western Union services in an instant.
Kenyan company Kipochi has launched a solution that allows people to send and receive the virtual currency, BitCoin, through their M-Pesa (mobile money).
The Kipochi application is a light weight easy to use BitCoin Wallet that allows users to receive and send BitCoin all over the world – even on low cost feature phones.
By linking the service with the hugely popular money transfer service, Kenyans and in the medium to long term Africans will be able to receive money transfers from the diaspora using a more efficient and cost effective method as compared to traditional bank transfers.
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According to company officials, the Kipochi application, the M-Pesa platform and Bitcoin can together assist the developing countries in creating faster remittances and growth on gross domestic product (GDP); M-Pesa transactions currently account for approximately 31 percent of the East African regions GDP.
The Kipochi application is expected to gain traction – especially in regions where there are limited access to banking and financial services.
The services works on all mobile phones, having SMS, USSD and HTML5 frontends, as well as a desktop computers.
The word Kipochi means wallet in the East African language Ki-swahili.