BitPesa – Africa's Bitcoin Payment Process Blockchain ...

Weird questions but is there a way to mpesa someone a gift without my name being attached to it? Kenyan methods or international methods/apps are appreciated!
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(Or I can mpesa someone 2.5k if they wanna help send 2k of it after. Pm?)

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South Africa based renewable energy startup Sun Exchange has raised $3 million to close its Series A funding round totaling $4 million.
The company operates a peer-to-peer, crypto enabled business that allows individuals anywhere in the world to invest in solar infrastructure in Africa.
How’s that all work?
“You as an individual are selling electricity to a school in South Africa, via a solar panel you bought through the Sun Exchange,” explained Abe Cambridge — the startup’s founder and CEO.
“Our platform meters the electricity production of your solar panel. Arranges for the purchasing of that electricity with your chosen energy consumer, collects that money and then returns it to your Sun Exchange wallet.”
It costs roughly $5 a panel to get in and transactions occur in South African Rand or Bitcoin.
“The reason why we chose Bitcoin is we needed one universal payment system that enables micro transactions down to a millionth of a U.S. cent,” Cambridge told TechCrunch on a call.
He co-founded the Cape Town headquartered startup in 2015 to advance renewable energy infrastructure in Africa. “I realized the opportunity for solar was enormous, not just for South Africa, but for the whole of the African continent,” said Cambridge.
“What was required was a new mechanism to get Africa solar powered.”
Sub-Saharan Africa has a population of roughly 1 billion people across a massive landmass and only about half of that population has access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency.
Recently, Sun Exchange’s main market South Africa — which boasts some of the best infrastructure in the region — has suffered from blackouts and power outages.
Image Credits: Sun Exchange
Sun Exchange has 17,000 members in 162 countries who have invested in solar power projects for schools, businesses and organizations throughout South Africa, according to company data.
The $3 million — which closed Sun Exchange’s $4 million Series A — came from the Africa Renewable Power Fund of London’s ARCH Emerging Markets Partners.
With the capital the startup plans to enter new markets. “We’re going to expand into other Sub-Saharan African countries. We’ve got some clear opportunities on our roadmap,” Cambridge said, referencing Nigeria as one of the markets Sun Exchange has researched.
There are several well-funded solar energy startups operating in Africa’s top economic and tech hubs, such as Kenya and Nigeria. In East Africa, M-Kopa sells solar hardware kits to households on credit then allows installment payments via mobile phone using M-Pesa mobile money. The venture is is backed by $161 million from investors including Steve Case and Richard Branson.
In Nigeria, Rensource shifted from a residential hardware model to building solar-powered micro utilities for large markets and other commercial structures.
Nigeria’s Rensource raises $20M to power African markets by solar
Sun Exchange operates as an asset free model and operates differently than companies that install or manufacture solar panels.
“We’re completely supplier agnostic. We are approached by solar installers who operate on the African continent. And then we partner with the best ones,” said Cambridge — who presented the startup’s model at TechCrunch Startup Battlefield in Berlin in 2017.
“We’re the marketplace that connects together the user of the solar panel to the owner of the solar panel to the installer of the solar panel.”
Abe Cambridge, Image Credits: TechCrunch
Sun Exchange generates revenues by earning margins on sales of solar panels and fees on purchases and kilowatt hours generated, according to Cambridge.
In addition to expanding in Africa, the startup looks to expand in the medium to long-term to Latin America and Southeast Asia.
“Those are also places that would really benefit from from solar energy, from the speed in which it could be deployed and the environmental improvements that going solar leads to,” said Cambridge.
Vaya Africa launches electric ride-hail taxi network

Facebook issued a whitepaper on the new cryptocurrency that they’re issuing, the Libra. Now, the whitepaper lacks any technical details about their plans (composition of currency basket, the exchange rate, etc.) The sources that they use are bad. But I’ll try to focus on why the Libra is a bad idea, at least at addressing the unbanked who Facebook claims to support.
So how will it work?
Facebook takes your money, puts some of it in a bank and uses the rest to buy securities from various countries. They then “mint” a new coin and give it to the user. When people want their money back, Facebook just “burns” the Libra and sells securities. This means the Libra is based on a basket of securities and bank deposits (see: Money Market Funds and Currency ETF).
What’s Facebook’s plan?
Facebook plans on tackling two problems with the Libra. The first and most important is to “bank the unbanked”, aka providing people with access to financial services. The second is to help reduce remittance fees and make it easier to transfer money. The second point will probably be how most people use the Libra.
Some issues with the Libra:
It won’t help the unbanked
Facebook’s main plan is to help the “unbanked”. In the problem statement, they acknowledge that;

“those who remain “unbanked” point to not having sufficient funds, high and unpredictable fees, banks being too far away, and lacking the necessary documentation”.

It seems that they forgot about two other reasons that were given in the World Bank paper that they cited: some people don’t need a bank account (30% of people) and some rely on family members with bank accounts (26% of people). Even so Facebook’s system will only solve two of these problems (high fees and distance) and will do nothing about the biggest reason people don’t have a bank account, not having enough money (66% of people).*
David Marcus, the current head of Calibra, said this in an update;

“The very people who say they lack the money to open a bank account are actually not saying that they have no use for modern financial services. They’re just saying they can’t afford to access the system, so they remain on the fringes and are forced to use services that charge exorbitant fees and rates.”

I guess he never read the report used by Facebook, where excessive fees was a separate reason cited by 26% of respondents.
I also want to clarify the documentation issue. This usually refers to Know-Your-Customer and anti-money laundering laws, which vary in each country. Facebook will have to adhere to these same laws when setting up Libra unless they want to get tackled by every financial regulatory agency in the world. These laws typically require identity proof and address proof, things that many poor people are unable to provide. And that means they can’t help the unbanked.
*Note that people were allowed to choose multiple reasons, so the total adds up to more than 100%
How are people going to get their Libra?
If you look at the list of corporations and organizations partnering with Facebook, it’s not very hard to notice that some pretty important firms are missing; Banks. Which begs the question, how are people going to convert their hard-earned money into Libra? In the video that they showed, it looks like people can use credit and debit cards, but that doesn’t help the unbanked. You can hand someone cash in exchange for them sending you Libra, but that’s always risky. The World Bank report gives us some potential answers;

“People using digital payments need to be able to deposit and withdraw cash safely, reliably, and conveniently at cash-in and cash-out points”.

One example is a post office. However, post offices are probably not going to accept anything other than legal tender, which means no Libra. Physical infrastructure is important, especially to serve developing countries. Facebook seems to have forgotten about that.
They don’t have phones
Facebook refers to a statistic from the World Bank that 1.7 billion adults are unbanked, of which 1 billion own mobile phones and half a billion have internet access. Let’s just ignore that last number, as I have no clue where they got it from. The 1 billion strikes me as being quite high, and there’s a reason for that. The study that they used looked at mobile phones, not just smartphones. The rhetoric that they use in their whitepaper and in official responses from the company seems to imply that Libra can only be used through apps and web browsers.
This doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to use mobile payments on non-smartphone devices; there is a very popular mobile payment system in Kenya called M-Pesa that transfers money through texts. But it will be a while before an independent developer gets that working, if it ever happens. And until then, the 50% of people in developing countries without access to smartphones will not be able to use Libra.
It’s unstable
It’s true that the Libra won’t be very volatile. But as the exchange rates of the currencies backing the Libra fluctuate, the value of the Libra is going to change as well. Facebook mentioned it in their whitepaper, so it’s not like they don’t know about it. If exchange rates swing the wrong way, users could find themselves losing a significant portion of their initial purchase. And while it’s possible that banks and retailers might start to accept Libra in transactions or to pay off mortgages, until the government starts accepting taxes in Libra (aka never), people will always have to convert Libra into something else. As long as the need for conversion exists, there will be risk.
And while we’re on this topic, lets talk about those countries with unstable currencies. Many people from those countries will invest their money into Libra. But that just causes the local currency to depreciate in value, making the poor people without access to the Libra worse off.
Additional ranting
They use the price of a phone from Best Buy to show that people across the world can buy smartphones for $40 (it’s on sale for $28 right now if you were curious). They seem to have forgotten that the US is not the only country in the world (don’t worry, it’s a pretty easy mistake for us Americans to make). Now, admittedly it’s quite hard for me to find data for minimum phone prices for all countries in the world. But then again, I’m not Facebook. I would assume that households in developing countries would have to spend a larger portion of their monthly income to buy a mobile phone than households in America.
Honestly, looking at the sources that they cited, it seems more and more like some intern just used the first search result from Google instead of doing any actual research.
It’s not cryptocurrency
Yes, it is blockchain (it actually might not be, I just don’t understand crypto very well and it doesn't really matter for this sub). It’s considered to be a stablecoin, a cryptocurrency that is tied to other assets. But that’s about the only thing that makes it a cryptocurrency. Unlike bitcoin, it should be a decent store of value and has the potential to be a medium of exchange and a unit of account if retailers start adopting it. Which means it can actually be used as money. There’s a central reserve that fully controls the Libra. And unlike other stablecoins, the Libra is also backed by securities. As far as I’m aware, assets backed by securities are securities (at least that’s my definition).
If you really think about it, transacting in Libra is like paying for your groceries or the movies using shares from a money market fund. This should be considered capital gains (or losses), and would be taxed as such. Financial regulators are really going to love that.
No interest
Facebook’s plan is that “Users of Libra do not receive a return from the reserve.” Facebook will put a portion of the user’s money into a bank account. However, any interest earned will be kept as profits. This means that people who use the Libra can’t do anything about inflation without converting it to their local currency. This seems like a big oversight for company that seems to be betting on users holding on to their Libra and not exchanging it for their local currency.
Now, for people in countries that experience hyperinflation, this is not an issue. Libra would probably be less risky than the local currency and would protect their earnings. However, for the rest of the world bank deposits just seem like a better choice.
Conclusion
Now, this doesn’t mean that Facebook doesn’t have any valid concerns. Remittance fees are extremely high for people trying to transfer money anywhere. Having greater financial inclusivity would help reduce inequality and poverty. Digital technology is likely the best way for that to happen. But the idea that Facebook will help to “bank the unbanked” is a lie.

I just don’t understand why ETN is going down yet it is among the few projects with a working product. On the other side many cryptos in the top 100 with only plans on paper seem to be attracting investors. While ETN boasts of going for the 99% it should know that the 99% are not found entirely in Africa and Asia but the entire world. I am from Kenya, currently living in Canada and I can guarantee you that penetrating African market can be tough especially if the product doesn’t seem to have an advantage to what currently exists. For instance, in Kenya there is M-pesa which is the greatest thing that has ever happened to this country’s economy. With just a phone number you can send and receive money at an instant, pay for goods and services without needing a traditional bank account. You can have access to loans too. Sending money abroad from your M-Pesa account has become easier, with services like M-pesa to PayPal, M-pesa to western union , M-pesa to some select bank accounts in the Asian markets. This technology is very popular in many African countries and continues to grow. To me when I hear that "we want to bank the unbanked" I just laugh cause there is little understanding of what is really happening in these African countries. I consider many people in Africa banked but the developed world just doesn’t know since the mobile banking is quite unpopular to them. The only problem that exists is a well developed system to bridge the gap that exists between these two financial systems so that there is flow of money in both directions. And this is what ETN need to really focus on e.g making it easier purchasing things on amazon with ETN. People have money to spend in Africa it’s only that the popular mobile money system is not supported by most e-commerce services like Amazon, brokerage sites and cryptocurrency exchanges.
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One thing that the ETN team seam to get it wrong is that they are trying to solve a problem that in most cases is already solved, it’s just a matter of having ETN integrated in most services that people in the developing world would love to access just like people in the developed world. This leads me to the point of price. The price REALLY matters. This is because ETN is positioning itself as the next generation currency just like bitcoin and not a share of a company. This is simple economics; nobody would want to ditch the dollar or whatever fiat currency for something that is depreciating in value thus reducing the purchasing power. Cryptocurrencies and shares are totally different things. The team should approach its visions with the goal of redeeming it's cryptocurrency. People in the developing world are not morons to waste their time in something that will not be of value to them. At the end of the day , the value of something is tied to its price especially if it’s something that is to be exchanged for goods and services.
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My advice to the team will to stop promoting ETN as some sort of ‘charity’ coin but focus on bridging the gap that exists between developing and developed countries of how money moves between them. How ETN performs in the developed market will determine how it will perform in the developing world. If people in the developed world are walking away from ETN don’t expect the people in the developing world would walk towards it. The demand that will be in the developed world that have easy access to purchasing ETN on exchanges will seamlessly translate to demand of using ETN as an alternative currency in the developing world.
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I hope this message gets to the ETN team. Stay strong, stay positive.

Luno exchange
Luno is a Bitcoin exchange with a presence in South Africa, Singapore, Nigeria, Malaysia and Indonesia. It offers 0% fees for market makers, meaning you can avoid fees if you place a buy order then wait for a seller to take it.
+ One of the most trusted Bitcoin exchanges in Asia
+ Free deposits and low withdrawal fees
+ Low fees; 0% for market makers and only 0% - 1% for market takers (depending on fiat currency)
LocalBitcoins
LocalBitcoins is an escrow service which also helps to match bitcoin buyers and sellers. The most common method of payment for purchase is cash deposit.
Buying bitcoins via an in-person meeting, secured and facilitated by LocalBitcoins, may be one of the fastest and most private ways to buy bitcoins in any country.
+ Private, fast and easy
+ In-person trades require no personal information
- Beware of scams; always follow the rules
- Harder to buy large amounts of bitcoins compared to large exchanges
NairaEx exchange
NairaEx is the largest Bitcoin exchange in Nigeria. Its customers can purchase bitcoins with Perfect Money, bank transfer or with cash via bank deposit.
+ Long-running Nigerian exchange
- Identity verification offers less privacy than other purchase methods in Nigeria, like LocalBitcoins
BitPesa
BitPesa is a Bitcoin remittance company. They sell bitcoin in Kenya via the popular M-PESA mobile payment service. BitPesa also has a presence in 2 other African countries. In Nigeria, you can use BitPesa to buy bitcoins with your debit card or Paga account. In Uganda, you can buy with MTN or Airtel. Purchase method for Kenya is coming soon.
+ Convenient way to buy bitcoins in Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda
- Identity verification offers less privacy than other methods in Nigeria or Uganda, like LocalBitcoins
Mycelium Local Trader
Mycelium Local Trader helps you find local Bitcoin sellers. Once you locate a seller, you meet up in-person and conduct the trade. Mycelium charges absolutely no fees. While Mycelium Local Trader works great in highly-populated areas, users in low population areas will have trouble finding sellers.
+ Easy and cheap way to buy bitcoins with cash
+ Private way to buy bitcoins, no personal information required beyond cellphone number
- Users in sparsely populated areas will have trouble finding sellers
Changelly
Changelly lets you buy bitcoin with Litecoin, Dogecoin, altcoins and many other digital tokens. Changelly works in nearly every country but you will need another cryptocurrency in order to purchase bitcoins. Exchanges happen almost instantly because Changelly never actually controls your tokens but just exchanges them.
+ Easiest and fastest way to buy bitcoins with altcoins
+ Fees are reasonable for larger traders
- Need altcoins or other digital tokens to use
More info https://iconow.net/how-to-buy-bitcoin-in-nigeria-with-all-payment-methods/

Luno exchange
Luno is a Bitcoin exchange with a presence in South Africa, Singapore, Nigeria, Malaysia and Indonesia. It offers 0% fees for market makers, meaning you can avoid fees if you place a buy order then wait for a seller to take it.
+ One of the most trusted Bitcoin exchanges in Asia
+ Free deposits and low withdrawal fees
+ Low fees; 0% for market makers and only 0% - 1% for market takers (depending on fiat currency)
LocalBitcoins
LocalBitcoins is an escrow service which also helps to match bitcoin buyers and sellers. The most common method of payment for purchase is cash deposit.
Buying bitcoins via an in-person meeting, secured and facilitated by LocalBitcoins, may be one of the fastest and most private ways to buy bitcoins in any country.
+ Private, fast and easy
+ In-person trades require no personal information
- Beware of scams; always follow the rules
- Harder to buy large amounts of bitcoins compared to large exchanges
NairaEx exchange
NairaEx is the largest Bitcoin exchange in Nigeria. Its customers can purchase bitcoins with Perfect Money, bank transfer or with cash via bank deposit.
+ Long-running Nigerian exchange
- Identity verification offers less privacy than other purchase methods in Nigeria, like LocalBitcoins
BitPesa
BitPesa is a Bitcoin remittance company. They sell bitcoin in Kenya via the popular M-PESA mobile payment service. BitPesa also has a presence in 2 other African countries. In Nigeria, you can use BitPesa to buy bitcoins with your debit card or Paga account. In Uganda, you can buy with MTN or Airtel. Purchase method for Kenya is coming soon.
+ Convenient way to buy bitcoins in Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda
- Identity verification offers less privacy than other methods in Nigeria or Uganda, like LocalBitcoins
Mycelium Local Trader
Mycelium Local Trader helps you find local Bitcoin sellers. Once you locate a seller, you meet up in-person and conduct the trade. Mycelium charges absolutely no fees. While Mycelium Local Trader works great in highly-populated areas, users in low population areas will have trouble finding sellers.
+ Easy and cheap way to buy bitcoins with cash
+ Private way to buy bitcoins, no personal information required beyond cellphone number
- Users in sparsely populated areas will have trouble finding sellers
Changelly
Changelly lets you buy bitcoin with Litecoin, Dogecoin, altcoins and many other digital tokens. Changelly works in nearly every country but you will need another cryptocurrency in order to purchase bitcoins. Exchanges happen almost instantly because Changelly never actually controls your tokens but just exchanges them.
+ Easiest and fastest way to buy bitcoins with altcoins
+ Fees are reasonable for larger traders
- Need altcoins or other digital tokens to use
More info https://iconow.net/how-to-buy-bitcoin-in-nigeria-with-all-payment-methods/

For me the stellar network looks like it's actually a good idea. And the community is way less toxic with decent discussions.
Give me your most critical opinion!