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South African Bitcoin exchange ICE3X has launched Bitcoin trading in Nigeria



Nigerians can now trade Bitcoin as South African Bitcoin exchange ICE3X has launched Bitcoin trading in the country for the first time. Thus, the organization has opened up a potentially huge market for Bitcoin in Africa’s most populous country. For the purpose the company has formed an exclusive partnership with Nigerian payment processor VoguePay.

According to a source from ICE3X the partnership with VoguePay will allow users to buy and sell Bitcoin using the local currency, the naira, directly from existing VoguePay wallets. Nonetheless, the company is also planning to roll out merchant services allowing local businesses to accept Bitcoin – this is going to boost the local Bitcoin users.

Talking to media professionals ICE3X founder Gareth Grobler described Nigeria as “virgin territory” for Bitcoin as according to him only a small number of traders and hobbyists are involved in Bitcoin in the country so far. However, he believes that the market is potentially massive and partnership with the local payment processor VoguePay will help it explore.

He says that VoguePay has spotted the opportunity Bitcoin offers, seeing as one of the primary attributes of Bitcoin is its security. Also, as Nigerian online consumers simply do not have the same access to goods and services from international vendors due to one simple thing – credit card fraud, Bitcoin can be the best solution for the problem.

Nigeria Has Huge Scope for Digital Currency Companies

Nonetheless, Grobler believes that setting up in the country was “pretty straightforward”, as it was simply a matter of expanding the business and infrastructure ICE3X already operates in South Africa. The company says that by building a more advanced online payment system in Africa it is paving the way for young African entrepreneurs.

Grobler says that his company wants to help African entrepreneurs foster better business relationships by making the online markets more accessible to millions of Africans. Whereas VoguePay’s executive and research teams are based in Canary Wharf, London, development, operations and professional services groups are located in Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos.

According to some data Nigeria has over 177 million people out of which 33.6 million are in the 18–35 age brackets. Thus, the country has huge population of youth which has huge potential for growth. With 48.1 million active Internet subscriptions through mobile phone networks, there is huge scope for the digital currency.


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