The Request Network Foundation has formed a partnership with PwC France and the Francophone Africa Blockchain Laboratory. This partnership is intended to influence and develop the future of professional services across a range of industries. The focus is on offering solutions to clients in terms of onboarding blockchain into established business practices.
The Request Network Foundation has been established to promote the adoption of blockchain. This is through a framework designed to allow any business to develop its own financial solutions based around blockchain.
Blockchain technology (mutual distributed ledger technologies) is one of the most commonly discussed of the disruptive technologies to have emerged in recent years, and it is driving so-termed ‘permissionless innovation’ with distributed ledger technology. The key advantages of blockchain are transparency, security and efficacy for business transactions.
Ass well as mainland France, the new partnership will work with businesses based in French-speaking Africa. PwC France and Francophone Africa represent a multidisciplinary team focusing on blockchain, cybersecurity and big data technologies.
Blockchain offers many advantages to businesses in Africa, especially in those developing countries with more precarious economic and political conditions. Many countries within the continent are off the financial grid, with haphazard regulations, a lack of banking competition, fines and ‘cash and criminal’ money markets. The security and transparency offered by blockchain has, unsurprisingly, received considerably interest from the African businesses sector.
As an example, Coin Telegraph reports, a company called BitPesa operates, at first glance, like a standard remittance company, transferring money across borders. However, instead of using a conventional medium like the U.S. Dollar, the company has opted for Bitcoin and blockchain for cross-border transfers.
Commenting on the new partnership, Marie Line Ricard, Partner, Blockchain Lab Leader, PwC France stated: “We’re taking a chance to experience new opportunities, new technology, new type of management, new mindset of living together, share and collaborate: this is exactly what Blockchain promises to us.”
Overall, PwC envisages considerable potential for blockchain especially in financial services. The analysts are developing the strategic and implementation capabilities to aid financial institutions, technology companies and startups in implementing the technology.
