Mobu, Africa’s Investment Bank of the Future
MOBU CEO Juan Engelbrecht presented his approach to a vertically integrated financial services business comprising a securities issuance platform, a securities exchange and a digital banking solution at the Tokyo FinTech Meetup on June 4, 2019, and in the process shared some valuable insights on the state of the financial services sector in Africa.
While global venture capital investments exceed USD 100bn, Africa receives less than 1% of this deal flow. 34% of the adult African population is unbanked, making up a large part of the world’s unbanked population. So the second largest continent, with 1.3bn people of which 950m are mobile phone subscribers, is woefully underserved. Also as a result of volatile, restricted and collapsing currencies, Bitcoin as a store of value has steadily gained acceptance, with Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa having the third, fifth and sixth highest number of Bitcoin holder per capita respectively.
MOBU presents itself as the only market solution encompassing unique escrow services, a lockup utility for tokens (so that issuers receive the funds only over time, against delivery of milestones of the project), investor account portals, a crypto payment solution with fiat-crypto on-/off-ramps, and a digital securities exchange license.
At this point, MOBU is based on an adoption of the ERC20 token, the MOB20 protocol, that includes additional features such as catering for corporate actions. At the meetup, Engelbrecht announced a Block.One investment of USD 1m, which implies that MOBU will migrate to the EOS blockchain protocol in the future.
Given its first mover advantage, as the first African exchange with a stock exchange license, a security broker license and an asset management license, and a well-networked CEO sourcing listing deals with a focus on the commodities and mining industries, MOBU projects EBITDA of about USD 5m in 2020, increasing to over USD 100m by 2024.
MOBU Cash
MOBU Digital Asset Exchange
MOBU Issuance Platform
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