Xend Finance now has 100 000 users of its crypto bank’s savings platform and is looking to increase that number to 500 000, having recently expanded its service to Ghana and Kenya.

This means that Ghanaian and Kenyan users are able to convert their respective local currency (Cedis and Shillings) into digital currencies.

Enabling this conversion is a key part of Xend Finance’s Africa expansion plans. It also underpins the user case for cryptocurrencies in Arica, despite central banks’ reluctance to allow banks to process cryptocurrency transactions.

Xend Finance, popular and widely used in Nigeria, started off by offering a DeFi platform that catered for savings clubs. Xend Finance now intends to launch two new products in the next few weeks.

“We still have so much more in store, including two big product launches coming in the next month. Since launching our mobile application at the end of December, we have seen a tremendous amount of growth,” said Kevin Leu, PR manager at the company.

On Wednesday, Xend Finance announced that it had surpassed 100 000 users on the savings platform it hosts.

Ugochukwu Aronu, CEO at Xend Finance said “users will also be able to seamlessly convert their cryptocurrency” after the fintech spent the past year “pushing code and ensuring our platform is secure” through numerous audits.

In an interview with Aronu in August 2021, the Xend Finance executive said that the company was “seeing a gradual growth and steadily increasing adoption of saving in stable currencies in Nigeria” and in other parts of Africa.

“We launched our savings platform March 2021 and have been able to see over $6 million in savings volume on our platform with most savers from Africa. We started experiencing a faster adoption in July as multiple devaluations of the Nigerian Naira happened coupled with the CBN restricting sale of foreign currency to bureau de changes,” said Aronu.

With the backing of Binance and Google Launchpad, Xend Finance’s Mobile App also serves as a DeFi wallet, while also allowing for peer-to-peer fiat-to-crypto on-ramp and off-ramp.

For the remainder of the current year, Xend Finance aims to “on-board more than 500 000 non-crypto users that experience constant local currency devaluation into DeFi” to access high yields.

Although popular cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin have been highly volatile, with the price plunging, digital currencies such as Stablecoins - whose value is pegged to virtual assets such as gold and US Dollars - have remained resilient and attractive as a hedge against inflation.

Stablecoins have also emerged as a useful asset for savings and credit clubs across many African countries, including Kenya and Nigeria.