GrayFox

Just to add to this discussion. In the next 2 days there'll be a huge fintech festival held in Nairobi between the Central bank of Kenya and Monetary Authority of Singapore. At the moment, China is using MAS and UAE as their clearing houses for their belt and road plans. China is making huge in-roads across Africa with aggressive investment policies. They are building major ports, railways and superhighways in preparation for Africa's Free Trade Agreement Area. Africa will need interoperable cross border payments across services, countries and continents and a connection needs to be built to said clearing houses. Africa is dominated by mobile money and that is a game for innovative solutions like Mojaloop. The world demands an alternative to SWIFT and its slowly taking shape now. https://www.afroasiafintech.net/festival-speakers.php http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-07/19/c_137335521.htm https://www.gbm.hsbc.com/insights/growth/china-belt-and-road-financing-plugs-infrastructure-gap https://www.americanexpress.com/us/foreign-exchange/articles/china-belt-road-initiative-internalization-yuan/

"Synchronisation" will be the buzzword for the next few years. That "even playing field" cannot be achieved if everybody is designing their cars to work on the roads they themselves designed leading to different standards. One single highway to connect them all and let fintechs and banks duke it out in terms of service and price!

Probably some Chinese CEO of something or governor of their central bank or something

This is soon to change https://cointelegraph.com/news/egypt-lays-out-path-for-a-crypto-future-with-draft-law

Just to be on topic and putting my holiday to good use. If Africa were to succeed in this Free trade agreement then they need to crack retail payments. The IFC estimate retail payments in Africa to be a $1.5 trillion market and growing rapidly. Currently cash is king for small everyday payments which forms the majority of spend due to the lack of financial infrastructure and going the route of visa/mastercard is way too expensive for your everyday merchant in Africa. I truly believe Visa and their ilks will fail in Africa if they try to adopt the same strategy they use in Europe and other developed nations, hence why they are busy scrambling buying out innovative fintech companies. AMEX was the first forward thinker and saw the writing on the wall. Smartphone penetration in Africa is increasing must faster than setting up payment infrastructure built on old age thinking. It is cost effective to set up payments on mobile network operators than a banking infrastructure because it guarantees a much bigger penetration and in turn speeds up financial inclusion. This is one of the key reasons why Africa is a banking desert wasteland. Recently, there is a big push for using QR code attached to mobile wallets and other innovative solutions. Africa is using China as an example and completely bypassing cards opting instead to move into the world of mobile wallets and QR codes. Crossborder SME payments are also on the rise. If Interledger protocol can crack open this market, we are talking an untapped continent worth trillions of dollars and a young working population that is eager to adopt agile solutions. Population increase is estimated to be upwards of 50% by 2050 and by then hopefully Interledger Protocol will be ubiquitous just like the Internet is for children these days. I still stand by my statement that Interledger Protocol still remains Ripple's greatest checkmate move. I know these are old but they are worth reading as Ripple's solutions fit perfectly into this old age problem that Africa is trying to crack: 1- QR CODE PAYMENTS MAKING STRIDES IN AFRICA - https://atelier.bnpparibas/en/fintech/article/qr-code-payments-making-strides-africa 2- East African Interoperability: Dispatches from the Home of M-Pesa - https://www.cgap.org/blog/east-african-interoperability-dispatches-home-m-pesa 3- A $1.5 Trillion Tip on Cracking Merchant Payments - https://www.cgap.org/blog/15-trillion-tip-cracking-merchant-payments 4- East Africa - the heart of mobile money. What is next? - https://www.thepaypers.com/expert-opinion/east-africa-the-heart-of-mobile-money-what-is-next-/779537

They are called Tash Ma Tash. This is an old clip of their show. Sorry no captions for this one but to loosely translate, the one dressed in white is talking about how his son is a coward because he came running like a mad man screaming that he saw a snake in the desert. Gonna stop hijacking the thread :lol:

oh that brings back memories. Those 2 older gentleman are part of a long running comedy show. They are like the Monty Python of the middle east

I couldn't have said it better. Incredible summary.

I know of MTN and Orange deal but that Mifos is new to me and wow does that sound promising. Tanzania seriously building their TIPs on Mojaloop? Home sweet home!

First of all, love the break down of the points covered and the sauces. Makes my posts look like a cluster bomb that went off I might not be particularly focusing on Egypt but I have been looking into Africa as a whole. It seems like there is a massive push around the world for developing nations and emerging markets to move into mobile money and building future proof payment rails. It is easier to do that in those nations because there is barely anything there to begin with. It might take longer for developed nations to catch on as they are deeply entrenched in their old systems. Case in point is Kenya and M-pesa which is one of the most successful cases of mobile payment implementation. Take a look at the African Free Trade Area (much like the Customs Union in the EU) which is a monumental task if achieved and bare in mind Egypt is a ratifying member of the trade deal. If Africa is to create a free trade area with free movement of goods and labour, they also need to have interoperable payment rails and also need to include informal SMEs. This is where Mojaloop and Bill & Melinda Gates foundation are playing a huge role in Africa. On the eastern side of the continent, a new super country is being formed, going by the name of East African Federation with the goal of eventually using one currency. Africa is heavily moving towards mobile payment as it is cheap, affordable and easy to deploy. Putting things into perspective, out of all the mobile money services in the world, Africa accounts for around 50% of those deployed which has lead to more fragmentation with some countries having 2-3 different mobile money services. It is not just Egypt, it is Africa as a whole that make it the most ideal candidate for Ripple and I personally believe Interledger Protocol will play a huge role in shaping the future of this continent.

I am not a fan of creating new topics for the same subject so here goes! Just received an email update from the Bank of England in regards to synchronisation. Check out the wording on the document, feels like they spoke to Ripple a lot! https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/payments/rtgs-renewal-programme/rtgs-renewal-synchronisation-engagement-update.pdf

And then the United Nations publishes this today https://www.un.org/en/events/family-remittances-day/un-action.shtml "The potential for synergy in connecting the scale of remittances to reach the SDGs is clear: one billion senders and receivers and a projected US$6.5 trillion in international remittances will be sent to developing countries between 2015 and 2030." It just makes sense why Ripple is invited to these eyes wide shut parties at the IMF. As agents of change, Ripple has the potential to make a huge impact on these sustainable development goals (and dare I say, all 17 goals!) . Creating payment rails with negligible energy consumption and fees on a decentralised platform is Lagarde's wet dream....

small world https://ripple.com/ripple_press/ripples-blockchain-network-now-100-strong/

Ok, thanks for clarifying. Interesting, lying ******** lol. I was right not to trust them

Curious, when I set up my gatehub they provided me with my secret keys and advised me if I lose it then there's no way for them to recover it so they allowed me to write it down before I continued with setting up the account. Was this feature added recently or was it always there?