Rewiring African Payments: Obi Emeratom on Zone, Blockchain, and the Future of Regulated DeFi

 In this episode, I sit down with Obi Emeratom, the founder and CEO of Zone, to explore how his company is rebuilding the core infrastructure of African payments using a regulated, blockchain-based architecture.We unpack:The journey from Appzone to Zone and why the spin-off was necessaryHow Zone won over Nigerian banks without evangelizing cryptoWhat makes regulated blockchains credible to central banksWhy decentralization with permissioning may be the right model for AfricaThe real-world bottlenecks of legacy switches and how Zone bypasses themZone Pay, deep linking, merchant wallets, and the next wave of use casesWhy Obi believes the future of payments is regulated DeFi built from the ground upThis is not a theoretical chat t’s a grounded look at the friction in today’s systems and a pragmatic blueprint for what comes next.🎧 Listen in if you care about the evolution of African fintech infrastructure, cross-border payments, and compliance-aligned innovation.🔗 Subscribe to the F-Squared Podcast 📰 Get the newsletter - https://frontierfintech.substack.com/📱 Follow us on socialsX (Twitter) - SamoraKariukiTik Tok🔎 Want more fintech analysis like this? Subscribe to the newsletter at frontierfintech.substack.com