"We're just an API layer."
Famous last words.
The moment you're:
• holding funds
• routing money
• converting stablecoins
• managing settlement
you're no longer being evaluated as software.
You're being evaluated as financial infrastructure.
Halima Murunga ( @HalimaMurunga ) walked us through COMPLIANCE INFO SESSION FOR WEB3 FOUNDERS, what happens when a product starts moving money and suddenly finds itself under the attention of banks, payment providers, and compliance teams.
Some of the key points covered included:
• How banks evaluate Web3 products and financial risk.
• Compliance considerations around stablecoins, payouts, and money movement.
• Why "we're just an API layer" isn't always a sufficient answer.
• Common mistakes that can create regulatory exposure for startups.
• What AML and compliance teams pay attention to when reviewing transaction flows
• When a software product starts being treated like financial infrastructure
The session was practical, direct, and grounded in the realities of building in African markets where regulation, payments, and digital assets increasingly intersect.
If you missed it or would like to revisit some of the discussions, you can watch the full recording here:
>>> https://t.co/YXYS3U5iVq
@base@BasedEastAfrica
Halima Murunga ( @HalimaMurunga ) walked us through COMPLIANCE INFO SESSION FOR WEB3 FOUNDERS, what happens when a product starts moving money and suddenly finds itself under the attention of banks, payment providers, and compliance teams.
Some of the key points covered included:
• How banks evaluate Web3 products and financial risk.
• Compliance considerations around stablecoins, payouts, and money movement.
• Why "we're just an API layer" isn't always a sufficient answer.
• Common mistakes that can create regulatory exposure for startups.
• What AML and compliance teams pay attention to when reviewing transaction flows
• When a software product starts being treated like financial infrastructure
The session was practical, direct, and grounded in the realities of building in African markets where regulation, payments, and digital assets increasingly intersect.
If you missed it or would like to revisit some of the discussions, you can watch the full recording here:
>>> https://t.co/YXYS3U5iVq
@base@BasedEastAfrica
Met a Zim Uber driver who belongs to what he described as a Mukando with 153 members.
Each driver pays R 4000 pm to raise R 1.2 million every month. The Mukando buys two cars every week for their members.
Once the cycle is completed and everyone owns a car, they plan to build homes for their members.
The Mukando is a flexible scheme - each group devise their own rules to ensure its sustainability. Simplicity, transparency and trust are key Mukando features.
In 1997, Nairobi decided to procure chlorine for its three treatment plants. The tender went to a Kenyan called Kimani Kongo who decided that he knew something more effective at disinfecting water for the capital city…guess what he supplied?
CHALK!
https://t.co/ju7G59WgVb
Kayole was designed as a mini city with a stadium, hospital, industrial area, technical school and it's own CBD known as Kayole District Centre. The CBD was to act as a secondary CBD to ease pressure from main CBD in town that was constrained on growth by land availability.
We are ready for love when we can accept that everyone we could get together with would be trouble in some very substantial ways. (Alexandre Cabanel, Phaedre, 1880)
Did you know there was a time it was an offence to own a radio in Kenya without a permit from KBC? Equally,if your radio was lost one had to notify KBC.
There were also licenses for watching TV at home & owning a bicycle.Police would knock your door at night to demand for permit.
To a humiliating (but helpful) extent, some of the gravest problems we face during a day can be traced back to a brutally simple fact: that we have not had enough sleep. (Robert Dickerson, A Tired Man, 1956)
We spend much of our lives trying to create the circumstances in which, finally, we’ll be happy. The present is just the tedious, dreary period we have to get through until, in the future, we can enjoy ourselves. Ithaka shows us there is another way.
https://t.co/7j9wEgv4x4
Ghana is asking local bondholders to accept losses on interest payments as it restructures its debt to qualify for a loan from the IMF https://t.co/f39ZVl8cRC