As mobile payments and cryptocurrency have made strides providing an alternative to traditional banking in Kenya, legal conflicts have emerged among mobile currency providers and Safaricom, the nation’s dominant telecom service. Kenyan legal authorities may need to clarify how anti-money laundering/know your customer (AML/KYC) and other regulations will be enforced and who will enforce them.
BitPesa, a bitcoin payments and remittance service which uses the Safaricom telecom, and Lipisha, the payment gateway for both BitPesa and M-Pesa, are suing Safaricom in Kenya, according to International Business Times. Safaricom stopped Lipisha from processing M-Pesa transactions and later reinstated it as long as it terminated its relationship with BitPesa, which is Africa’s largest bitcoin trading platform.
Lipisha and BitPesa claim Safaricom has no right to require this.
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/telecombitpesa-legal-tangle-aml-threatens-mobile-payments-kenya/
