Why is it so difficult to grow Africa?
We observed that remittance services charged between 8–12% on international transfers, traditional banks had limited reach, and mobile money wallets were largely restricted to domestic use. While cryptocurrency offered a promising solution, most tools were designed for Silicon Valley—not for Nairobi.
Built by Africans,
for Africa
DigitalPESA was founded in 2020 by a team of experienced business leaders, software engineers, and former remittance operators who had personally encountered the challenges of expensive, slow, and exclusionary financial services across Africa.
Our co-founders have lived and worked throughout the continent. They have seen family members pay as much as $15 to send just $100 home. They have watched small traders lose valuable business opportunities due to slow and unreliable currency conversion. They have also experienced the daily frustration of being unbanked or underbanked in countries where the majority of the population remains excluded from formal financial systems.
DigitalPESA was created to address these challenges. Rather than building yet another payment app for those who already have bank accounts, we set out to develop inclusive financial infrastructure for the more than 500 million Africans underserved by the existing system.
We began with a simple yet powerful crypto exchange designed to work on basic Android phones. It enables instant settlement via mobile money and is supported by a network of cash agents operating within local markets.
Five years later, we have processed over 7.5 million trades, served more than 480,000 active users across 54 countries, and built a network of over 3,200 cash agents who are expanding access to crypto in previously underserved communities.
We are still at the beginning of our journey, but our growth so far has been extraordinary.