MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: Cross-border Payment Settlement Network EMQ Expands Into Africa

EMQ, a financial settlement network based in Hong Kong, recently announced its expansion into Africa, including the nations of Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda. The firm facilitates access to “millions” of mobile wallets in Asia and Europe, and it plans to expand into the Americas by June 2020.

EMQ partners with retail financial institutions to facilitate transactions, including foreign exchange and regulatory compliance, allowing it to “settle any cross-border movement of capital…for a broad range of services, including e-commerce, merchant settlement, procurement, remittance, payroll, etc.” These partners include Cambodian microbank AMK, GCash of the Philippines, China’s Shanghai Commercial Bank, China’s WeChat Pay and US-based payments firm Visa.

EMQ has six offices in East Asia and Southeast Asia as well as one each in Dubai and the UK. Financial data on the firm is not publicly available.

By Ng Chee Meng, Research Associate

Sources and Additional Resources

EMQ press release
https://emq.com/emq-expands-global-reach-into-africa

Crunchbase page on EMQ
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/emq#section-overview

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