Jack Dorsey’s TBD, operating as part of Block, has expanded its reach to Africa through a collaboration with pan-African cross-border payments company Chipper Cash. Chipper Cash has been integrated into the tbDEX protocol to facilitate cross-border payments and decentralized identity applications for individuals and businesses in Africa.
Mike Brock, CEO of TBD, highlighted the currency liquidity and financial system access challenges in Africa, emphasizing the focus on expanding the tbDEX ecosystem in the region. By incorporating Chipper Cash into its network, TBD aims to enhance global cross-border payments and decentralized identity initiatives. Chipper Cash is the second platform integrated into the tbDEX ecosystem, following the payment partnership with Yellow Card.
Chipper Cash currently serves 5 million consumers across 21 African countries and boasts over 1.2 million issued cards, making it one of the largest virtual card issuers in Africa. Chipper Cash’s collaboration with tbDEX is expected to revolutionize remittance flows into Africa, reducing costs and streamlining transactions.
The partnership will initially target faster and more affordable consumer remittances before exploring opportunities to support small businesses. Chipper Cash’s existing services cater to underbanked SMEs in 40 African countries, facilitating local and cross-border digital payments. Leveraging tbDEX, Chipper Cash plans to expedite consumer and small business onboarding, enhance identity verification processes, and enable trusted, compliant transactions using verifiable credentials and decentralized identifiers.
In addition to launching tbDEX 1.0 at Web Summit Rio, TBD has initiated hands-on tbDEX Developer Workshops in Africa in collaboration with Circle and Yellow Card. These workshops aim to educate developers on utilizing tbDEX, an open-source liquidity and trust protocol, to facilitate seamless and compliant cross-border payments settled in seconds.
