Africa Tech Trends is a fortnightly column by Tom Jackson focusing on the most important developments in Africa’s technology industry, and examining how technology is changing the way business is being done on the continent.
Chinese credit and debit card issuer China UnionPay is rumoured to be promoting its mobile payment service AndroidPay in line with a planned launch towards the end of 2015.
André M. Bajorat about the relationship between banks and FinTech startups.
Klarna will spend more than $100 million over the next three years as it kicks off its U.S. online payments business.
A new venture capital fund for startups has been launched by the mayor of London. The new London Co-Investment Fund will be $133 million in total, coming from the mayor’s office and from six private-sector partners.
Earlier this year some entrepreneurs walked into our office and explained sidechains to us. I was pretty excited about the concept then and I continue to be excited about it. This past week some of the people who explained them to us and some other people I don’t know published a paper about sidechains called Enabling Blockchain Innovations with Pegged Sidechains. I think this is an important paper and everyone involved in bitcoin, blockchains, and cryptocurrencies should give it a read.
Paii, the mobile payments joint venture created by Danish mobile network operators TDC, Telenor, Telia and 3, has been sold to Swipp, a mobile payments service owned by a consortium of more than 60 banks, after Paii came to the conclusion that the telcos are not as well placed as banks to take the platform forward.