Emmanuel Tokunbo Darko is the chief executive officer of CPayant, a cross-border platform using blockchain technology to power emittance across Africa.
His journey to solving remittance difficulties in Africa stemmed from his personal experience during school. While studying in Ghana, he faced the challenge of receiving pocket money from his parents, who lived in Nigeria.
“This personal frustration became the driving force behind my determination to find solutions to ease remittance processes and make financial transactions more accessible and efficient for individuals across the continent,” he said.
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According to Darko, most people focus on international remittance, from the UK to Nigeria or Canada to Nigeria, without considering payment within Africa.
He said, “For instance, transactions from Mozambique to Uganda. or Mozambique to Nigeria and other African countries became our major concerns towards building a blockchain technology that can access remittances across these countries.”
Emmanuel is a technology entrepreneur who believes the power of Web3 or Blockchain Technology should be used to solve real-world issues.
CPayant, the brainchild of Darko with over two thousand users allows its users to fund their wallets and make transactions seamlessly. However, he said the app is in the testing stage but will go live soon.
“Individuals without a formal bank account can open an account with their phone number. Our platform allows users to convert call credit into money to fund their wallets.
“Our solution is to empower anyone with a smartphone to send and receive money seamlessly, with near-instant transactions and minimal fees intra-continentally in Africa, through Web3 technology,” he said.
According to Darko, although CPayant uses blockchain to tailor its offering, it doesn’t mean the company does cryptocurrency. He said when people hear blockchain they assume you are into crypto.
For us as a company, Blockchain is been used to facilitate faster and cheaper payment transactions across Africa, he said.
“Building on blockchain gives Cpayant a strong security feature. However, although we are custodial we don’t have access to your funds. Our wallet is based on biometric security, you don’t need to have a password, and the user’s face ID or thumbprints can be used to access their wallet.
On challenges faced by the company, he said that finalising our license faced regulatory constraints, which caused delays. Although the company could have launched payments sooner, it prioritised doing things correctly.
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Darko emphasised that securing funding hasn’t been easy, however, the company was able to secure a grant from the Celo Blockchain Foundation and is currently in the process of securing a pre-seed round.
However, before CPayant, Darko came from a banking background having worked with Zenith and Databank.
He has also led years of tech marketing with one of those being the Head of Digital Marketing at Cypheme, an AI-tech company in Paris. He was Co-Founder and VP of Marketing at ICOWatchlist and is the founder and former CEO of Babaoo Foods Limited, where he currently serves as an executive board member.
