Bitsika partners with Davido and DMW to improve financial transactions across Africa

Bitsika announced its partnership with David "Davido" Adeleke, a multiple-award-winning artist, and entrepreneur, in a press conference on Thursday, October 8, 2020.

The event saw the attendance of Bitsika's board members, Davido, and members of the DMW team.

Bitsika is one of Africa's fastest-growing payment companies. The company, which launched in September 2019, has experienced immense growth over its first year. According to CEO and Founder, Atsu Davoh, the company had already processed over $30 million in transactions and has been experiencing exponential growth month-on-month.

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"Making money transactions easier is what we want to do at Bitsika," said Alkesh Thavrani, founding partner at Project23 — lead investors in Bitsika. He also hinted that the partnership with Davido's team would see Bitsika attempt to recreate CashApp's success with Hip-hop in the US.

Bitsika is a payments company that allows users to send and receive money in various currencies, including cryptocurrency. Users can deposit and spend in Naira, Cedis, CFA, Dollars. Similar to when using CashApp, Bitsika users get a cash-tag or username that can be used to receive funds.

Davido is one of Africa's biggest music artists. Having been active for over ten years in the music scene, Davido's work has earned him plaudits and multiple awards. His social media followership, which is the highest of any artist on the continent, will definitely be instrumental in fulfilling the goals of the newly-formed partnership.

For Samuel Boahen, COO of Bitsika, that is very much the case. "We decided to go into this partnership with Davido because, in Africa, I don't see anyone with his crazy numbers. I think his social engagement is the best in Africa. This is purely a business decision that we admins can decide to take. And we believe with the Davido board now we can even 10x every single month."

According to Alkesh, realising that Davido's fans were the people that would most benefit from Bitsika was key to pursuing the partnership. The company is looking to bring more users on board as it continues to integrate additional features into the app. Eventually, Alkesh says, they want to get to a point where everyone uses Bitsika for multiple financial aspects of their day.

Speaking on why he opted for the partnership with Bitsika, Davido remarked that as someone who travels often, he has had problems sending money. "When they explained to me that this was something that could help Africa, help my fans, and help me grow and expand, it was a no-brainer. I'm in love with the app" he said.
Asa Asika, General manager of DMW and Davido's entertainment manager, also shared some thoughts about the future of Bitsika and how the partnership would function. He said, " There's so much more we could do with this app. We're in conversations about selling tickets and merchandise through the app."

The partnership appears to be a long-term commitment from both parties instead of the traditional short term brand partnership arrangements that companies typically have. Asa Asika hinted it in a statement where he mentioned that they (DMW) were now stakeholders in the business.

The partnership announcement, which comes on the heels of Bitsika's first anniversary, has been described as a major coup. Having one of the biggest artists on board is likely to give Bitsika a competitive advantage over other fintech companies in the same space. Speaking during the event, Atsu Davoh remarked that with Davido on board, he hoped they could reach 1 million users.