With an initial focus on remittances from Canada to Nigeria and after processing over $70 million Canadian dollars, Africhange is now expanding its coverage allowing remittances to be sent from Canada to anywhere in Mexico by partnering with Bitso, the most experienced platform in Latin America in the use of crypto for cross-border payments.

With easier entry requirements and job offers in Canada, more and more Mexicans are migrating to the country. According to the latest report of the Institute of Mexicans Abroad (IME), in 2020, almost 130,000 Mexicans resided officially in the country. And as reported by Data Mexico, in the first quarter of 2022, Mexico received US$146 million dollars in remittances from Canada.

“Our offering aims to support Mexican immigrants in Canada who need to send money back home as well as Mexican residents that rely on remittances from Canada. We do this by addressing some of the most pressing problems experienced when sending money back home: speed of transfer, cost of transfer and exchange rate" said Olatunji Obaoye, Senior Product Manager at Africhange. “By leveraging the blockchain and partnering with Bitso - one of the biggest cryptocurrency platforms in Latin America, we aim to provide a cross-border exchange experience that's seamless, cheap and fast”

Currently, the number of immigrants in the country represents approximately 21% of the country's population. Data collected in 2020 by GPFI indicates that roughly 15% of Canadians sent money internationally on a regular basis, representing a slight increase from previous years.

"We are very happy to announce this partnership with Africhange which reinforces our commitment to bring useful crypto products to migrant communities, while confirming Bitso's leadership in one of the most successful use cases of crypto technology: cross-border payments,” said Carlos Lovera, Partnerships and Business Development Lead at Bitso. “It is exciting to support purpose-driven companies like Africhange to expand their mission to the Mexican market while achieving ours which is to make crypto useful.”

Africhange, which launched services in December 2020, is helping leverage blockchain technology to serve users in Canada. As an immigrant-founded company, the company understands that remittances sent back home plays an important role in people’s lives, and cutting transaction costs significantly helps recipient families.

Remittances represent one of the least known use cases of crypto technology, in which price fluctuation or coin volatility has nothing to do with it, and yet it has important direct benefits to the user such as lower fees and transfers in almost real time. In 2021, Mexico was the second-largest recipient of remittances in the world according to a World Bank report. These remittances represent one of the main sources of foreign currency for the Mexican economy, accounting for 4 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to data from the Bank of Mexico.