Stellar Development Foundation Enterprise Fund Invests $5 Million in Wave

SAN FRANCISCO and DAKAR — October 24, 2022 — The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) today announced a $5 million USD Enterprise Fund investment in Wave, an African mobile money app which endeavors to make Africa the first cashless continent.

Wave has set out to build a new financial network that addresses problems that currently exist with respect to mobile money. The growth of mobile money in recent years expanded financial services to millions of people in Africa without access to bank accounts. However, problems related to its affordability, accessibility, and user experience are persistent, and current market solutions have not succeeded in mitigating these problems for users at scale.

Wave has shown progress in this area, introducing simpler, cheaper solutions that have helped it gain users at an impressive rate, serving over 10 million monthly users across Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda, Mali, and Burkina Faso. With a network of over 30,000 agents, Wave is expanding access for users to deposit, withdraw, pay merchants and pay bills for free, and send money more affordably.

"Stellar Development Foundation and Wave share a common mission -- to bring equitable access to financial products across the world. I'm thrilled to collaborate with SDF to bring digital solutions for saving and transferring money across Africa," said Drew Durbin, CEO of Wave.

“Connecting end users who can benefit from the advantages of Stellar in a meaningful way, particularly users who are currently underserved by existing financial services, is critical to our mission,” said Denelle Dixon, CEO and Executive Director of SDF. “We’re excited to support Wave as they integrate with the Stellar ecosystem to optimize services for their consumers.”

SDF’s Enterprise Fund is a venture-style fund for growing the open-source Stellar network globally.‍

About Wave Mobile Money, Wave Senegal, and Wave Côte d'Ivoire

Wave Group is a Fintech, which via its subsidiaries, operates the fastest-growing mobile money product in Africa. Wave is an impact-first business with the ambition to financially include millions of financially excluded African adults. Our vision is to help Africa become the first cashless continent. For more information, visit wave.com.

About Stellar

Stellar is a decentralized, fast, scalable, and uniquely sustainable network for financial products and services. It is both a cross-currency transaction system and a platform for digital asset issuance, designed to connect the world’s financial infrastructure. Financial institutions worldwide issue assets and settle payments on the Stellar network, which has grown to over 7 million accounts. For more information, visit stellar.org.

About the Stellar Development Foundation

The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) is a non-profit organization that supports the development and growth of Stellar, an open-source network that connects the world’s financial infrastructure. Founded in 2014, the Foundation helps maintain Stellar’s codebase, supports the technical and business communities building on the network, and serves as a voice to regulators and institutions. The Foundation seeks to create equitable access to the global financial system, using the Stellar network to unlock the world’s economic potential through blockchain technology. For more information, visit stellar.org/foundation.