LAGOS, (The Southern African Times) – Appzone Group, sub-Saharan Africa’s leading fintech software company has announced the launch of Zone, the continent’s first blockchain platform for payment processing that facilitates local and Intra-African payments in fiat and digital currencies.
Developed by Appzone Switch, a subsidiary of Appzone Group, Zone forms the foundation of Appzone’s plans to build out Africa’s first decentralised payment network, which will allow inter-bank transactions to be processed directly between banks without the involvement of any intermediary.
Fintechs and banks within countries across Africa have traditionally performed inter-bank payments through centralized Electronic Financial Transaction (EFT) switches which serve as single points of contact between financial institution and handle settlement at defined intervals although they usually cause major downtime when they fail and generate reconciliation issues in certain situations.
Zone enhances this by providing a decentralized architecture where each participating institution connects directly with all others so that there is no need for central infrastructure and no single failure can affect the entire network.
In addition to core functionality like payments authorization, and real-time settlement, the team at Appzone Switch are looking to evolve the platform’s digital token for settlement into a stable Pan-African digital currency that is fully compliant, approved by central Banks, and backed by a basket of fiat currencies in Africa. The idea will be for Zone to manage stablecoin wallets for regular individuals on the same distributed ledger that currently facilitates payment authorization and settlement.
By connecting every financial service provider to this decentralized payment network, Appzone Switch envisions a future beyond cash where payments are frictionless and instantaneous within and between every African country so that Africa can accelerate trade and economic prosperity.
