Crypto Startup Wala Is Reaching Real Africans with Ethereum Micropayments

Revealed exclusively to CoinDesk, Wala is now facilitating roughly 6,300 daily dala transactions for more than 57,000 wallet accounts across Uganda, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Because before the token sale, Wala was facilitating customer transactions via its mobile app with the existing infrastructure in these African countries.

With 100,000 merchants offering goods and services through Wala's platform, the startup has created a small-scale circular economy - something crypto enthusiasts have long vied for.

So how is Wala facilitating these microtransactions on the ethereum blockchain, which has been dealing with growing scaling concerns as of late?

Sure enough, according to bitinfocharts.com, this year ethereum transaction fees have ranged from between $0.17 to $4.15, which would make sending microtransactions like Wala users are facilitating too expensive.

Wala takes in all user payments through that channel and then batches those transactions at some point to settle them onto the ethereum blockchain.

Until then another way Wala is getting around the costs and delays of transacting on blockchains is by centralizing their operations somewhat.

As mentioned, Wala acts as the intermediary party between dala users and the ethereum blockchain.

Wala is partnering with the British trading firm Block Commodities to provide the equivalent of $10 million in dala loans for subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.

Wala plans to partner with a bank in Zimbabwe and the global microfinance bank FINCA to offer similar loan products, and possibly also savings services.