Stakeholders Call for Collaboration among Africa’s Fintech Players

Emma Okonji
Stakeholders across the finance and payment landscape in Africa, have commended Appzone on the launch of Zone, Africa’s first blockchain platform for payment processing.

They are also calling for increased collaboration among African FinTech industry players.
At the official launch event, which held recently in Lagos, recently, the stakeholders, made up of captains of industry and business leaders, discussed the significant role that Zone would play in decentralising payments and inter banks transactions across Africa, whilst also calling for increased collaboration from all in the finance and technology sectors, to advance Africa’s Fintech industry.

CEO and Founder of Sparkle, Mr. Uzoma Dozie, who delivered the keynote address at the event, disclosed that with the right amount of collaboration and adoption, Zone would improve existing payment infrastructure and create robust experiences for players in the market. According to Dozie, “Zone is built on a new technology that addresses trust and transparency in the sense that users don’t have to rely on the bank’s central system where they are locked out of the process. With Zone, users are more aware, and they perfectly understand every single bit of the process, which creates the transparency needed to build trust and increased adoption.”

Speaking about the unique features of Zone, the CEO and founder of Appzone Group, Mr. Obi Emetarom, described Zone as more than a blockchain payment platform. According to him, Zone is a financial network, made up of different financial institutions, that delivers payment processes and real time settlement.

“The Zone platform offers users exciting opportunities, it is a ubiquitous network because is connects all sorts of financial institutions from payment companies, micro finance banks to fintech to digital banks. Zone also uses peer to peer routing, which means that all the institutions leveraging the platform can connect directly without any middleman, ensuring reliability and scalability,” Emetarom said.

Zone has also started off a network across Africa that enables anyone to do real time transactions anywhere on the continent. Ultimately, Zone is set to deliver a compliant and stable pan African digital currency,” Emetarom added.

While speaking on the rationale behind the launch of Zone, the CEO of Appzone Switch, Mr. Uche Elendu, said: ‘’We are happy to officially unveil Zone as a decentralized blockchain based payment infrastructure that enables real-time settlement of fiat transactions, both in-country and out-country, while enabling the retail distribution of stable digital currencies including Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) in Africa.”