Africa’s first global blockchain bank celebrates over 100,000 users

Xend Finance, has announced it now has over 100,000 customers on its crypto bank’s savings platform. The BlockchainCrypto Bank, which recently expanded its service to Ghana and Kenya, says it is looking to increase to 500,000. This comes almost 75 days to when the company annouinced that 50,000 people now use the platform.

This accomplishment will open the platform to local currencies in Ghanaian Cedis and Kenyan Shillings. Backed by Binance and Google Launchpad, Xend Finance users will now be able to seamlessly convert their cryptocurrency back to Cedis or Shillings.

Enabling this conversion is a key part of Xend Finance’s Africa expansion plans. It also underpins the user case for cryptocurrencies in Africa, despite central banks’ reluctance to allow banks to process cryptocurrency transactions.

Xend Finance, popular and widely used in Nigeria, started off by offering a DeFi platform that catered for savings clubs. The company now intends to launch two new products in the coming weeks.

“We still have so much more in store, including two big product launches coming in the next month. Since launching our mobile application at the end of December, we have seen a tremendous amount of growth,” said Kevin Leu, PR manager at the company.

In an interview with Ugochukwu Aronu in August 2021, the CEO stated that the company was “seeing a gradual growth and steadily increasing adoption of saving in stable currencies in Nigeria” and in other parts of Africa.

“We launched our savings platform March 2021 and have been able to see over $6 million in savings volume on our platform with most savers from Africa. We started experiencing a faster adoption in July as multiple devaluations of the Nigerian Naira happened coupled with the CBN restricting sale of foreign currency to bureau de changes,” said Aronu.

With the backing of Binance and Google Launchpad, Xend Finance’s Mobile App also serves as a DeFi wallet, while also allowing for peer-to-peer fiat-to-crypto on-ramp and off-ramp.

For the remainder of the current year, Xend Finance aims to “on-board more than 500 000 non-crypto users that experience constant local currency devaluation into DeFi” to access high yields.

Although popular cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin have been highly volatile, with the price plunging, digital currencies such as Stablecoins – whose value is pegged to virtual assets such as gold and US Dollars – have remained resilient and attractive as a hedge against inflation.

Stablecoins have also emerged as a useful asset for savings and credit clubs across many African countries, including Kenya and Nigeria.

Sandeep Nailwal, CEO and co-founder of Polygon, acknowledged the achievement of Xend Finance and said:

“Congratulations to Xend Finance on reaching 100,000 platform users.They have demonstrated a blatant need for programs aimed at underserved areas.

I am pleased with the job they are doing in Africa and elsewhere as one of their early investors. In underserved areas around the world, Polygon is here to assist them.”