The Governor of Kenyan Central Bank Patrick Njoroge declares there should be no hurry adopting digital currencies in the country: Kenya does not have infrastructure and capability to deal with them today.
The statement was made at the “Mind speak” forum in Nairobi in reply to a question whether the bank had made any progress in developing the means for the adoption of cryptocurrencies in the country, reads a recent article by Standard Media.
In December 2015, the Central Bank issued a public notice warning the citizens against using virtual currencies. The document emphasised the risks connected with bitcoin’s volatility and the anonymity of transactions. As bitcoin and “similar products” are not legal tender, citizens should desist from transacting in this currency, stated the bank. It drew special attention to digital currency exchanges all over the world being mainly unregulated, thus giving the customer no guarantee of safety of their funds.
However, the disapproving position of the Central Bank does not mean that bitcoin is altogether illegal in the country: there are several thousand bitcoin users in Kenya. Elizabeth Rossiello, the founder and head of bitcoin payment company BitPesa, commented on the official warning concerning bitcoin risks saying that, on the contrary, her firm is all about safety:
“BitPesa is safe, and trading in bitcoin is very safe. Anyone who has transacted any business through us knows this for sure. Our aim is to make it cheaper for people to make money transfers.”
Nevertheless, as CoinFox wrote earlier, BitPesa had to stop its partnership with the national payment service M-Pesa in view of the negative position of the Central Bank. And, although BitPesa managed to go on building a partnership with Airtel Money, still, according to Motherboard, the number of active bitcoin users of in the country is still very small.
A significant part of all banking services used by the Kenyans is provided by the mobile payment system M-Pesa founded in 2007 by Safaricom. More than 25 million citizens of Kenya employ this and other payment services, the total population being 44 million. According to 2014 statistics, Kenya topped the list of the countries with the most banked population in Africa.
Andrew Levich
