LAUNCH | ChitChat Launches Africa’s First Secure Chat Platform in Zambia with Integrated USD Digital Wallets

Social commerce platform, ChitChat, went live in Zambia today, offering Africans a secure chat platform with built-in USD digital wallets.

As reported by BitKE in July 2023, the super-app is developed by Union54, a leading provider of innovative digital financial solutions, and in partnership with MasterCard, a global payments technology company.

ChitChat will enable users to send each other money to digital wallets within chats. The platform will also offer USD Debit Cards by Q2 2024.

ChitChat is a social commerce platform that enables users across Africa to chat with each other over an encrypted platform. Built with security and effortless payments in mind, ChitChat enables users to send instantaneous USD payments to friends and family within chat conversations. Funds are transferred to and from user wallets, with in-app conversion from USD to Zambia Kwacha and vice versa offered as well.

ChitChat aims to provide users a safe and secure place to chat, transact, send and receive money, and create communities.

ChitChat’s card and wallet features are the first steps toward becoming an online/offline platform for social commerce. Starting today, users can chat and transact by sending funds to each other’s wallets. When USD cards launch in Q2 2024, users can complete transactions in person by using their ChitChat card as they would any other. In the coming weeks, ChitChat will roll out new features, including group wallets.

“We are excited to announce ChitChat’s launch in Zambia and the simultaneous launch of our digital wallet feature. ChitChat’s founding principle is to be a safe, secure, and sovereign platform for social commerce. Building on this, we are pleased to bring world-class payment infrastructure to Africans once again,” said Perseus Mlambo, CEO of Union54, the developers of ChitChat.

“We aim to grow ChitChat into a platform that accelerates commerce across Africa and believe we have created the right chat platform with payments to serve as the foundation for what’s to come,” he added.

As reported by BitKE, Union54 is the first Zambian startup to get into Y-Combinator and Africa’s first card-issuing API. Through their partnership, Union54 and MasterCard announced that they have collectively issued over 2 million cards to individuals in Africa by July 2023.

About Union54

Union54 has developed a number of tools to propel African commerce forward. Our customers are financial technology companies across Africa. Together with our customers, we’ve issued millions of debit cards to African consumers from almost every country on the continent.

Those cards have gone on to be used for hundreds of millions of dollars across different merchants from various industries and locations. In the process, we’ve helped our fintech customers earn revenue in the millions of dollars. For more information, visit www.union54.com.

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