A Deloitte survey of African financial institutions found a marked cooling in attitudes towards cryptocurrencies by banks, insurers and other institutions. Only 30% see an opportunity, down from 63% the previous year. However, the previous survey was just before the FTX crypto exchange collapsed. The latest was between August and October last year, before the recent uptick in activity.
There’s been a more subtle shift in emphasis on central bank digital currencies (CBDC). A slightly larger number of people (36%) expect a significant impact on financial inclusion (previously 33%). However, there was a substantial decline in the proportion, expecting a moderate financial inclusion impact (27% down from 37%), and more people expect the effects to be weak (36% up from 30%). These figures could reflect Nigeria’s eNaira, which is struggling to gain traction.
Several other benefits of a CBDC showed a significant improvement, particularly efficiency and sovereignty.
African cryptocurrency: more emphasis on payments
Back to cryptocurrency, Africa’s emphasis differs from most advanced economies. The leading use cases are tokenization and cryptocurrency for payments. In both cases, only 27% of institutions see an opportunity. However, far more organizations have yet to form an opinion – 40% regarding tokenization and 43% concerning payments.
One of the organizations that shared commentary as part of the report was Yellow Card, an African cryptocurrency exchange and on and off-ramp with a presence in 16 countries. While its marketing talks about Bitcoin, ETH and stablecoins, CEO Chris Maurice emphasized the importance of separating US dollar stablecoins from the rest of the crypto industry. “Businesses across Africa are using stablecoins every day to make international payments, manage their treasury, and hedge against inflation,” he said.
The Chainalysis geographic report on cryptocurrency activity reinforces this. Nigeria is the only African country in the top ten overall. However, for P2P volumes, which would include most stablecoin payments, African countries make up seven of the top ten most active.
Deloitte didn’t share how many people were involved in the survey.
