Grace Ashiru
Calvin Ayre, who started the well-known bitcoin venture capital firm Ayre Ventures, helped fund Centbee’s $1 million pre-series A round. Based in London and South Africa, Centbee helps people send and receive digital currency on the Bitcoin blockchain BSV.
Centbee, a company that started in 2017, has made a digital wallet that uses the BSV blockchain and makes it easy to send and receive Bitcoin. The company was started by Lorien Gamaroff, a crypto expert based in Johannesburg, and Angus Brown, who has worked in banking for 20 years.
Centbee’s crypto infrastructure allows customers to use the Minit Money service to send digital currency payments to friends and family who live abroad.
Recently, more features have been added to the roadmap. The ChatPay feature of Centbee handles the “in-wallet chat application” function of Minit Money. The new company also offers digital cash products and services through a second decentralized finance app.
We rarely hear from remittance providers using crypto, but it’s an area with potential. Traditional remittance companies are plagued by the time lag induced by international banking systems, particularly SWIFT. Because blockchain is used to confirm cryptocurrencies, money arrives much faster and can be saved or invested by the recipient if they do not want fiat cash to spend,” the company stated.
Centbee uses the BSV ledger to keep track of all remittance transactions. It is marketed as a “real peer-to-peer” electronic cash system for sending Bitcoin because it is used for valuable things, not just for currency speculation.
Gamaroff and Brown are Centbee’s jointly appointed chief executives. In addition to its London headquarters, the firm has offices in South Africa to facilitate its expansion. Centbee claims that 35,000 remittance payments into Africa have already been made feasible.
Calvin Ayre’s contribution builds on his company’s previous promise in 2019. The latest investment will help Centbee achieve its growth goals by increasing its technical and operational capacity. Ayre said, “My faith in Centbee has been rewarded by Angus and Lorien’s ongoing work to make Bitcoin, the original protocol in the form of BSV, easy to use and available to everyone.”
