May was a fantastic month for me, particularly because it was my birth month. Following my yearly ritual, I took time to reflect on the highs and lows of the past year and focused on finding ways to improve myself.
The month started with good news from the Bank of Ghana- WeWire got into the BOG’s Innovation Sandbox for blockchain and stablecoin solutions. I attended and pitched our new platform on the innovation stage at the 3i Summit organized by BoG and the Development Bank Ghana. Pitching our platform with the latest updates we made for the first time was exciting.
The new updates, which will become public this week, are set to improve how local and global businesses transact with customers in different markets. With these latest updates, businesses globally can onboard with WeWire to collect and make payments in EMEA regions. Despite spending only a few years in the market, WeWire is breaking new frontiers as a Ghana-based company facilitating international payments. WeWire now supports Swift USD payments to 80+ countries, SEPA payments for EUR to all European countries, GBP faster payments in the UK, and EUR & GBP payments on Swift.
Businesses can fund their wallets via USD, EUR and GBP from their existing accounts and/or KYC’ed counterparties while funding of accounts via GHS, NGN, KES, XAF, XOF & UGX still exists. This means that global businesses can easily use WeWire to collect payments from their African customers. Customers pay in their local currency, and the company receives it in their international currency (USD/EUR/GBP).
I want to say a big thank you to Kwame Oppong, the head of the Fintech Office, Foster Onyx-Gyamfi, the fintech innovation officer, and the rest of the team at BOG for a wonderful event that brought together regulators, banks, fintech players, and other business leaders. I appreciate that WeWire was given the chance to showcase our innovation to the world and provide a solution that drives growth for Africa.
What’s next for WeWire
WeWire will work with regulators in Africa and globally to streamline the process of developing regulatory guidelines that cover our business operations. In the coming months, we will launch the following solutions.
- Invoicing for businesses - This would allow local and international businesses to invoice and collect customer payments.
- Business API—Businesses can access our rate API and API keys, which will allow them to integrate our wallet system on their platform and convert currencies right from their system at any point.
- Mobile Applications—Our customers have constantly requested this feature. We’ve heard from you and are working on launching it in Q3.
I am excited about how far we have come, and I can’t wait to work with you.
With love,
The Original LiveWire, Eben Ghanney.
