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African Stablecoin Fintech Juicyway Hits $1B Milestone In Cross-Border Transactions
- Written by Andrea Miliani Former Tech News Expert
The African fintech Juicyway recently announced processing more than $1 billion in transactions powered by stablecoin technology. The startup, founded and operating since 2021, also recently raised $3 million in a pre-seed round.
In a Rush? Here are the Quick Facts!
- Juicyway generated $1.3 billion after 25,000 transitions from its 4,000 clients
- The company recently raised $3 million in a pre-seed round
- The startup is launching publicly after three years of operations reaching multiple large clients
According to TechCrunch , Juicyway reached a recent milestone without a public app, and with little marketing, reaching large clients like Bolt and Bamboo—one of Africa’s largest stock brokerages. After 25,000 transactions from its over 4,000 users, the startup generated $1.3 billion in total payment volume.
Juicyway has been growing organically and reaching more and more clients—relying on its service and word-of-mouth referrals—and is now launching publicly.
The fintech specializes in cross-border payments and has recently expanded to the United States, making it simpler for Africans in the United States to send money to African countries starting with Nigeria.
“Our mission is to be the one platform that enables Africans of all economic strata to seamlessly participate in the global market on equal footing,” states its website .
Juicyway uses stablecoins like USDT and USDC to manage transactions instead of managing fiat currencies directly. This way they allow users to purchase, hold, or exchange cryptocurrencies and send money to other digital wallets quickly.
Ife Johnson and Justin Ziegler, Juicyway founders, are proud of their solution and expect the new U.S. expansion to help reduce barriers in the African economy.
“Without access to American banking or platforms like Juicyway, as someone born and raised in Africa, I wouldn’t be able to participate in the global economy, you know, as free as I currently do,” said Johnson in an interview with TechCrunch.
Other non-US fintech have been growing and expanding as well. The Mexican fintech Stori raised $212 million in funding in August and Revolut recently got its banking license in the United Kingdom .
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Instagram’s Head Warns About Sharing AI-Generated Content
- Written by Andrea Miliani Former Tech News Expert
Instagram head Adam Mosseri published a series of Threads posts last Sunday warning users about sharing content on social media as generative AI can create images that look real. Mosseri admitted that they have limitations in tagging all ai-generated content.
In a Rush? Here are the Quick Facts!
- Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, warned about AI generating realistic images that can be perceived as real
- Mosseri encouraged users to be more critical when consuming content on their social media platforms
- Meta is working on labeling AI content, but they have been facing challenges and limitations
Mosseri—who has been working for Meta since 2008 —explained that realistic AI creations are now easily made and that users should consider the account providing the information and its credibility before sharing with others.
The executive compared massive film productions like Jurassic Park to current technologies and acknowledged the quality and the speed of advanced AI tech.
“Generative AI is clearly producing content that is difficult to discern from recordings of reality, and improving rapidly,” wrote Mosseri in one of the posts.
Mosseri also acknowledges that they are not able to filter and control all the images and AI-generated content shared.
“Our role as internet platforms is to label content generated as AI as best we can,” He added. “But some content will inevitably slip through the cracks, and not all misrepresentations will be generated with AI, so we must also provide context about who is sharing so you can assess for yourself how much you want to trust their content.”
The Head of Instagram emphasized that users should be more critical when consuming content, question whether the statements could be real or not, and “always consider who is that is speaking.”
Many users replied and complained about the company not taking more responsibility for the situation. “I haven’t seen a single meta platform label a single post as AI outside of the -voluntary- labels on IG by the poster,” wrote one user. “You’ve had years and years to be ahead of this… But instead, put your head in the sand and ignored every one of your users who have been reporting this for you,” wrote another.
Users have been also reporting this year that Meta’s content regulation system is not working properly , as it has been banning accounts for the wrong reasons.
