Tando, a Kenyan Bitcoin startup, has announced that it has now featured Bitcoin Lightning addresses directly on M-Pesa phone numbers. This integration indeed makes it easier to access BTC for almost all mobile money users in the country.
On X, the company announced that “40 million Kenyans now have a Bitcoin Lightning address! They didn’t need to sign up for one because they had it this entire time, attached to the phone number in their pocket!”
The firm stated that the users could send BTC via the Lightning Network by way of a conventional Kenyan mobile number format of “0717252303@bitcoin.co.ke.” The recipient automatically gets the money in their M-Pesa wallet in shillings, according to Tando. The company emphasised ‘all 40,000,000’ to indicate that every M-Pesa number works.
Why It Matters
The transaction could ease the congestion of BTC payments in Kenya where M-Pesa is already the preferred option for daily transactions. Users need not download a crypto wallet, use seed phrases, or convert Bitcoin manually. Instead, just a phone number is needed.
For context, M-Pesa was an SMS-based digital money transfer service launched by Safaricom in 2007 that revolutionized digital payments in Kenya. The service was woven into people’s everyday lives and used for everything from paying for groceries and taxis to salaries and bills.
Tando’s integration is just a clever solution that leverages that infrastructure and settles with the Bitcoin Lightning Network in the background. The company also said that wallets that are LUD-09 compliant offer a “nice clickable link to see your M-Pesa receipt”.
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From Ghana Inspiration To Kenyan Bitcoin Rails
Tando’s roots go back to the African Bitcoin Conference in Ghana last year in 2023. The startup claimed that it was inspired by a speech by BTC advocate Femi Longe. At the time, Longe stated that “Africans need to create Bitcoin solutions for Africans.”
Hence, Tando took an initiative to work on such an initiative. The team also received details about its name. They noted that “Tando” is the Asante god of thunder and lightning. Thus, they used this name as a reference to the Lightning Network of Bitcoin.
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How BTC Gained Momentum As Medium of Exchange
Many crypto users in the West are essentially buying Bitcoin for its value. However, Tando said that wasn’t the case in the East.
The company said most Kenyans were more interested in using BTC as a medium of exchange than a store of value. The start-up said it wanted to create an app similar to the well-known M-Pesa. However, it will come “with just one small change – Bitcoin as the medium of exchange”.
