SmartCard Marketing Systems Inc. (SMKG: OTCQB) announced a joint venture (JV) partnership with KanaCash, a digital fintech organization based in Africa. The partnership aims to provide KanaCash with the proprietary Intellectual Property Portfolio to offer customers and merchants in Africa unique solutions in digital payments. This will be done by enabling the marketplace to link with the customers’ digital wallets. This JV will allow KanaCash to achieve its goal of capitalizing and implementing the tech suite in a relatively untapped market.
Statistics showed that more than two million Sub-Saharan African immigrants living in the US, regularly transfer money to their families in Africa. Also, more individuals in Sub-Saharan Africa have mobile money accounts than they do traditional bank accounts. In rural areas, access to mobile money is more widespread than access to bank branches. As a result, mobile money is fast becoming the preferred method to receive money in the region, but the major players in the market have not made this service available.
KanaCash will start sending remittances from the US to 11 African markets. Since 2021, remittance inflows to Sub-Saharan Africa soared 14.1% to $49 billion. This is a massive business opportunity for any cutting-edge platform with deep knowledge of the African diaspora and local market. This unique opportunity positions KanaCash as an excellent platform to quickly capture market share, compete, and scale. About 60% of the African population (100 million) are without a traditional bank account, yet, there is a high percentage of smartphone usage. With mobile money becoming the most preferred method of payments, a FinTech platform like KanaCash has a lot to gain.
KanaCash currently operates in the United States, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Cabo Verde. They have more than 24,000 customers in Liberia and Sierra Leone alone. In the partnership, KanaCash offered a 15% stake in their company to SmartCard Marketing Systems Inc., at a valuation of $4 million as part of the initiative in exchange for licensing.
In the words of McSwain Forkoh, the CEO and Co-Founder of kanaCash, “We are excited about this JV with SmartCard. With this JV, KanaCash is positioned to drive seamless customer experience and interoperability in remittance and payments across Africa.”
Featured Image: Megapixl © Yakobchuk
