African banks have been late to the fintech party, but after leaving huge swaths of the population to get their financial services from telcos — most famously Safaricom’s M-Pesa in Kenya — banks here are increasingly seeing the continent as a testing ground for new financial technologies like bitcoin and the blockchain.
Blockchain is the hot topic at shiny new fintech innovation hubs like Rand Merchant’s AlphaCode in Johannesburg, which hosted the Afrikoin conference in December and is running a fintech accelerator this year, and Barclays Rise in Cape Town, which is hosting Fintech Africa’s blockchain conference on Feb. 25.
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http://afkinsider.com/119904/why-barclays-africa-is-interested-in-bitcoin-and-blockchain/#sthash.fdfc2sqI.dpuf
