“I was shocked and disappointed to see that FTX named BTC Africa S.A. and other AZA Finance entities in its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing today. To be clear: AZA Finance entities are not affected by the FTX bankruptcy, and we are taking steps to correct the erroneous court filings.
AZA Finance is a global payments and foreign exchange fintech. Founded in 2013 as BitPesa, we empower companies worldwide and within Africa to move money, exchange currencies, make payments and settle easily across all major African and G20 currencies (including some digital currencies). AZA Finance is licensed in multiple jurisdictions as a payments provider. We do not hold customer funds and never have. Less than 10% of our transactions across all of our entities are via digital currencies.
Earlier this year, we announced a commercial partnership with FTX Africa to expand web3 in Africa by helping them build regulated, safe and low-cost payments rails, as well as other discussed but not-yet-launched initiatives such as African artist NFT collections.
In doing so, FTX Africa became a customer of AZA Finance, first utilising our stable and efficient infrastructure to pay out to a small number of customers in Africa. However, neither FTX nor any of its associated entities own or control AZA Finance or our entities, including BTC Africa SA. Our entities are not part of the FTX bankruptcy. In its disorganised haste, FTX erroneously listed our entities in their bankruptcy filing.
