1. You have formalised the Mesh partnership, launched Assetback, opened an affiliate programme and a payment partner programme, all inside a month. What is driving it?
Honestly, these choices were driven for the same objectives; how we connect different choices and channels to achieve user satisfaction. If somebody is holding a balance and can’t easily use it, everything else we build is decoration. Mesh is distribution, it puts the wallet inside hundreds of platforms people are already in. The partner programme is the merchant side, which is what decides whether a payment is possible at all, not just whether it is fast. Assetback changes what you get back when you spend.
The affiliate programme is the human side, because in these markets, people try something because somebody they know already did. The number underneath all four is monthly card volume, $271 million in May last year and $656 million in May this year. That is what we are building against.
2. Who is the typical user in this part of the world?
I can tell you it’s not really the person sending money home. These users matter a lot, but that’s a different product and there are good companies building it. Our user here is usually on the receiving end of work, right. A designer in Lagos with a client in Berlin, a developer in Nairobi contracting for a company in London, a business in Accra invoicing outside the country. They’ve got dollars because they earned them, so the question isn’t which app sends money cheapest; it’s what to do with a balance they’re already holding. The account just happens to be onchain. There was a YouGov survey earlier this year with BVNK and Coinbase, and 95 percent of crypto-active Nigerians they asked said they’d rather be paid in stablecoins, with Nigeria and South Africa coming out ahead of everywhere else on growth. That’s a finding about work and making it pay.
