Bundle, a social payments app has launched its services in Nigeria after incubation by leading cryptocurrency firm Binance.
Bundle allows its users to request, send, and receive cash or crypto from their peers in Nigeria.
By the end of this year, the firm plans to expand to over 30 African countries and provide a simple fiat on and off-ramp for crypto in the continent.
Bundle supports Binance Coin, Bitcoin and Ether as well as the local fiat currency — the Nigerian naira — but there are plans to add more fiat currencies in the coming weeks.
Payments can be processed through cards, bank transfers and stored in the application’s wallet.
The service will initially launch without fees, but Know Your Customer verification and fiat withdrawal and deposit limits will be applied.
1/n I'm super excited to announce Bundle (@BundleAfrica), an Africa-focused social payments app for cash and crypto 💸
After working on this for the last couple of months, we are coming out of stealth and also announcing our $450k pre-seed raise from @binance pic.twitter.com/1mvK1m6taT
— Yele ‘夜雷’ Bademosi 💸 (@YeleBademosi) April 23, 2020
The mobile application is already available on the Google Play Android application store, and the iOS version will be published on Apple’s App Store in the coming weeks. No desktop version is currently supported.
Bundle closed a pre-seed fundraise in September 2019, raising $450,000 from Binance.
Yele Bademosi, the CEO and co-founder of Bundle, said that Binance created a number of application programming interfaces useful for developers in the cryptocurrency industry, suggesting that the application may use some of them.
Per the announcement, about 40% of banked Africans prefer to use online transaction systems and use advanced financial tools, partly because of the continent’s low median age of 19.
This young, tech-savvy population is the target of Bundle’s financial services.
Bademosi said: “We built Bundle with the digitally native African user in mind. They are social, online, and connected across geographical boundaries.
“They prefer their financial services delivered digitally via mobile apps as opposed to visiting brick and mortar bank branches.
“We built Bundle as a mobile wallet that supports cash and crypto, and makes using crypto feel like just another digital financial transaction done on a mobile app like Venmo.”
Bundle CTO Taiwo Orilogbon explained that Africa is fertile ground for cryptocurrency-based financial innovation, stating, “Currently, only 1.4 million people out of 1.2 billion people in Africa use crypto today. This is a worthwhile mission because making the blockchain ecosystem more accessible unlocks economic opportunity on and for the continent.”
