Stellar partners team up to facilitate the use of USDC on Stellar for remittances
between Europe and Africa
The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) on October 25 announced via a press release that global payments Technology Company Flutterwave works on allowing the use of the USD coin (USDC) stable coin on the Stellar network.
The development comes at a time when there is an increased remittance between Europe and Africa.
Flutterwave will work alongside Tempo Payments, which is Stellar’s principal partner in Europe and is based in Paris.
Incorporating USDC is expected to simplify and also make remittances between Europe and Africa less expensive.
In the press release published on Stellar’s website on Oct. 25, Flutterwave CEO said:
“It is more expensive to send money to sub-Saharan Africa than to any other region in the world. Our new payment corridors on Stellar will allow us to continue expanding the Flutterwave network to bring all-important, cost-effective money transfer services to African business owners.”
The announcement comes some months after Stellar integrated Circle’s USDC stable coin that has seen tremendous growth in 2021 with a surge of over 700% in its market cap.
Flutterwave inroads in Africa
Flutterwave has processed over 140 million transactions worth more than $9 billion to date. It has served almost 300K businesses including Facebook, Booking.com, and Uber.
Flutterware also already has an infrastructure in over 33 African countries including South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, and Rwanda.
Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) focus on the African market
Africa has a growing remittance market and the SDF has been targeting it for over a year and it has even teamed up with East Africa payments firm ClickPesa that provides on and off-ramp banking systems in Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania.
Stellar and its partners face stiff competition from several other payment providers like Azimo, Transferwise, Payoneer, PayPal, Xoom, and WorldRemit that operate in Africa.
A large section of the African population is still unbaked, which offers digital payment companies opportunities to offer their services.
While remittance from the western countries and Europe to Africa fell drastically during the Covid-19 pandemic, there has also been a surge in the local use of digital payment platforms for transactions.
