Nkahiseng Ralepeli: How digital assets are ushering in a new era of banking in Africa

There is a convergence that is happening in Africa’s banking ecosystem. Banks, which were originally seen as the subjects of disruption driven by the emergence of digital assets such as cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and tokenised assets, are embracing them.Traditional finance and decentralised finance, once thought to be sworn enemies, are forming new use cases which are addressing some longstanding pain points in Africa’s banking ecosystem.For example, over the last half-decade, stablecoin adoption at the retail level has seen explosive growth, with Africans using them for facilitation of remittance payments and hedging against volatile local currency movements.And now Absa, one of the largest banks on the continent, is expanding its stablecoin offering to its corporate and investment banking clients, with services including treasury management and cross-border payments facilitation. Beyond stablecoins, the bank also offers tokenisation services, including token origination and asset tokenisation, with further use cases, including an Absa stablecoin, a future possibility.In this episode, Nkahiseng describes the various elements of Absa’s stablecoin and tokenisation plays, the rate and state of adoption, and his thoughts on the growth of digital assets on the continent.You can follow Nkahiseng on LinkedIn here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit techaways.substack.com