TBD expands decentralised tbDEX in Africa

TBD, a subsidiary of Block focused on open and decentralised financial technologies, has onboarded leading African fintech Chipper Cash to its growing tbDEX ecosystem.

Chipper Cash, boasting over 5 million consumers across 21 African nations, has integrated with the tbDEX protocol, unlocking liquidity for business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) cross-border payments across 40 African countries. The collaboration also paves the way for exploring innovative use cases leveraging decentralised identity solutions.

“Across Africa, the challenges of currency liquidity and access to global financial systems are palpable,” remarked Mike Brock, CEO of TBD. “For these reasons, we are laser focused on building out the tbDEX ecosystem in Africa, which already includes Yellowcard, the largest and only licensed stablecoin on/off ramp on the African continent. Fast on the heels of our tbDEX SDK 1.0 release, adding Chipper Cash to our growing network will help to accelerate our work on global cross border payments and decentralised identity.”

As one of the largest fintechs in Africa, Chipper Cash’s integration represents the onboarding of one of the continent’s largest virtual card issuers, with over 1.2 million cards issued. Maijid Moujaled, President and Co-Founder of Chipper Cash, expressed enthusiasm about the potential of tbDEX to revolutionise remittance flows into Africa, stating, “Remittances are a lifeline for many African families, but the costs of sending money to the continent remain among the highest globally. By plugging into an open protocol like tbDEX with numerous network participants, we believe we can, collectively as an industry, drive down these high costs and facilitate remittances in a more efficient, transparent, and compliant manner.”

While the initial collaboration will focus on enabling faster and less expensive consumer remittances, the two companies will also explore ways to empower small businesses. Chipper’s offerings for businesses already enable local and cross-border digital payments for underbanked SMEs across 40 different African countries, powering disbursements and collections from bank accounts, mobile money wallets, and Chipper wallets.

Furthermore, Chipper Cash will leverage tbDEX to unlock trusted, compliant transactions with verifiable credentials (VCs) and decentralised identifiers (DIDs) in order to accelerate the onboarding and identity verification of consumers and small businesses. “Chipper is also excited to collaborate with TBD on the trust frameworks and innovative credential designs that underpin every financial transaction on tbDEX,” Moujaled said. “The idea that we can have a standardised and streamlined way to verify our identity on the internet can help make the world feel a bit more inclusive.”

At its core, tbDEX is an open messaging protocol that connects liquidity seekers with providers and equips all participants with a common language for facilitating transactions. Utilising open-source protocols and common standards, it provides developers, enterprises, entrepreneurs, and governments with a universal language to facilitate transactions in a more inclusive, efficient, and trustworthy manner.

Central to tbDEX’s innovation is the creation of a trust protocol for the exchange of value, making bitcoin, stablecoins, other digital assets, and even traditional fiat more useful by creating a standardised way to establish trust and transact through an internet-native value exchange protocol. tbDEX is architected on Web5 infrastructure, utilising decentralised technologies such as Decentralised Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Credentials (VCs) to securely validate counterparty identity and trust, as well as helping to enable compliance with relevant laws and regulations across global jurisdictions.

As TBD continues to expand its decentralised financial ecosystem across Africa, the addition of Chipper Cash to the tbDEX network marks a significant step forward in driving financial inclusion and enabling more efficient cross-border payments and identity solutions for individuals and businesses on the continent.

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