This time last week we reported on Uhuru Wallet being given test approval by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe’s (RBZ) Fintech Regulatory Sandbox. The startup’s admission into the program was shrouded in a little mystery because there were very few details about what they were going to be doing and which bank they got approval to test with. Well… we have an update to the story. According to Uhuru Wallet’s Co-founder Trust Jakarasi, they have a plan with fellow Zimbabwean startup FlexID to tokenise the Gold Coins issued by the RBZ.
Essentially what the two will be doing is making a digital representation of the Gold Coins issued by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. Uhuru Wallet according to Trust Jakarasi, will be providing the User Interface, the users themselves and the payment rails while FlexID will be bringing the user verification technology.
The assignments for both parties make sense because FlexID was selected by the World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers Cohort for its sovereign digital identity solution. FlexID’s selection by the WEF made it the first in Zimbabwe to be selected for the prestigious accelerator. The program is, for context, where Twitter, Spotify and many big tech companies pitched their idea in their early days.
Uhuru Wallet, on the other hand, runs a cross-border remittance platform that has an already existing customer base as well as payment integrations. So for it to handle the payment rails side of things makes sense.
This is an interesting coming together because it will also result in the convergence of two Blockchain Technology Firms Algorand which is what FlexID runs on and Stellar which is part of Uhuru Wallet’s architecture.
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What is really intriguing about this is not that it will cost US$2 million according to Jakarasi’s tweet. It is more that this is happening at a time the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe is laying out a roadmap for its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
With FlexID and Uhuru working on this, it might mean the RBZ has finally seen the value of tapping into local startups with a competent track record with the technology. More importantly, this means that the Fintech Regulatory Sandbox is sort of open to Cryptocurrency and Blockchain startups…
What is disappointing, however, is that we are yet to know which bank Uhuru is working with. But I guess we will find out in the very near future
