Lipaword is building a borderless platform that enables immigrants, freelancers, and small businesses in emerging markets to earn, spend, and transfer money with unprecedented fluidity.
Founded in 2023 by tech operators and immigrants Jonathan Katende and Victor Bagu.
The company says it is responding to the long-standing frustrations of sending money across African borders, high fees, slow processing, and limited value access, by merging stablecoin infrastructure with a curated voucher marketplace.
“Our mission is to make cross-border financial access faster, more transparent, and purpose-driven,” Katende disclosed.
Highlighting the scale of the problem, he noted that remittances to Africa exceed US$150 billion annually, yet “most existing players focus only on sending money, not on how that money is used.”
What Lipaworld Does
Lipaworld’s platform provides a suite of financial tools that function as a borderless economic gateway for users across emerging markets.
Through its mobile app and business dashboard, individuals can open a self-custodial stablecoin wallet, giving them full and autonomous control over their digital assets without reliance on intermediaries.
The platform also offers a virtual USD bank account, a significant advantage for workers and freelancers who struggle with international payment restrictions, allowing them to receive global payments directly.
Users can earn yield, spend using stablecoin-linked cards, and access a robust marketplace of digital vouchers.
This marketplace is central to Lipaworld’s value proposition as it allows users to instantly purchase groceries, airtime, transport tickets, or healthcare for loved ones back home.
“Users can instantly buy groceries, airtime, transport tickets, or healthcare for loved ones back home,” Katende explained, describing it as an intentional system designed to ensure that cross-border money transfers solve real, day-to-day needs.
How Lipaworld Is Different, And Its Unique Advantage
In a remittance space dominated by conventional money transfer operators and new crypto-enabled fintechs, Lipaworld differentiates itself through a combination of user sovereignty and value-directed remittances.
Traditional providers tend to focus solely on the transfer itself, often burdening recipients with “high fees, delays, and limited access to value,” Katende said.
Lipaworld’s self-custodial wallet eliminates the need for customers to hand over control of their funds to third parties, offering transparency and autonomy rare in the remittance industry.
But its most distinctive feature is the integration of stablecoin rails with a curated voucher marketplace, which ensures that value reaches the right person instantly, without leakages, delays, or misuse.
By giving users not just the ability to send money but also the ability to determine how that money is used, Lipaworld asserts a “defensible edge” over competitors.
In Katende’s words, “While we compete with both traditional remittance providers and emerging crypto-based fintechs, our defensible edge lies in our value-added service offering and self-custodial wallet that gives users full control of their funds.”
Lipaworld’s Funding and Growth
Despite being a young startup, Lipaworld has already secured backing from a U.S.-based investor and attracted several innovation grants, signals of investor confidence in both its model and market potential.
The company is currently finalizing its pre-seed round, where investor interest is reportedly strong.
Katende noted that adoption has accelerated across the startup’s early markets, underscored by “steady month-on-month growth in wallet activations and marketplace transactions.”
Much of this traction comes from diaspora users who rely on Lipaworld to support families across Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Additionally, Lipaworld is gaining attention from institutional partners.
“Our B2B pipeline is also growing,” Katende revealed, adding that fintech and corporate partners are already leveraging the platform for cross-border disbursements, employee payouts, and other operational needs, expanding the company’s footprint beyond individual users and into enterprise infrastructure.
Expansion Plans
Lipaworld, at the moment, is preparing to broaden its reach into major Western economies with significant African diaspora communities.
The company has set its sights on the United Kingdom and Canada, two of the largest destinations for African migrants and remittance senders.
By entering these markets, Lipaworld hopes to capture a sizable share of the global remittance flow into Africa.
Meanwhile, the company is also strengthening its regulatory foundations by pursuing licenses across multiple African countries.
“On the regulatory front, we’re pursuing licensing on the continent to strengthen our compliance posture and enable further scale,” Katende said.
This regulatory push is not only strategic but essential, as the company seeks to operate across borders in a sector highly sensitive to financial rules, compliance, and customer trust.
Revenue Generation Method
Lipaworld’s revenue model is designed for scalability and diversification, blending multiple income streams typically seen in both fintech and crypto markets.
The company earns from transaction fees applied each time users send or spend funds, commissions generated through marketplace purchases, and yield earned on digital assets.
It also profits from spread margins on both voucher purchases and stablecoin transactions, small but consistent revenue lines that add up as user volume grows.
While still in an early growth stage, Lipaworld’s strategy is to build recurring revenues from both individuals and businesses who use the platform for remittances, payments, and everyday value distribution.
Katende emphasized that the focus is on “scaling recurring revenues from both individual users and business users using Lipaworld for payments, remittances, and value distribution.”
Why This Matters
Africa remains one of the most expensive regions in the world for sending and receiving money, and millions of families depend on remittances for food, education, healthcare, transportation, and economic survival.
By tackling not just the speed and cost of transfers but also the question of how money is used, Lipaworld positions itself as a transformative tool for financial inclusion.
The platform’s ability to send value instantly and transparently, whether through stablecoins or vouchers, could reshape how diaspora communities support loved ones and how small businesses operate across borders.
“Our goal,” Katende stressed, “is to make cross-border financial access faster, more transparent, and purpose-driven.”
If the company succeeds at scale, it could reduce financial friction for millions, make remittances more impactful, and redefine Africa’s digital finance landscape.
Talking Points
Lipaworld represents a compelling attempt to rewrite the logic of cross-border finance in Africa, but its ambition also exposes the complex realities of modern remittances.
The platform’s fusion of stablecoin wallets, virtual USD accounts, and targeted voucher systems offers a refreshing alternative to traditional high-fee money transfer channels.
Its success, nonetheless, will ultimately hinge on trust, adoption, and regulatory clarity, three factors that have challenged even the most innovative fintechs on the continent.
The promise of “purpose-driven” remittances is powerful, especially in a region where billions are lost to hidden fees and inefficiencies, yet Lipaworld must prove that its model can scale sustainably beyond early adopters and crypto-friendly users.
Its self-custodial wallet may empower users, but it also places responsibility squarely on individuals in markets where digital literacy remains uneven.
For all its potential, Lipaworld stands at the intersection of innovation and uncertainty, offering a bold vision for the future of African remittances, but still needing to navigate the socio-economic, regulatory, and behavioral hurdles that have stalled similar platforms before it.
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