Mara Appoints Nir Rikovitch As Chief Product Officer

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Today, the startup is announcing that it has completed a $23 million equity and token seed raise from multiple investors. The company is targeting an initial launch in July this year in Kenya and Nigeria, the two countries it is headquartered in. In a statement, the company revealed that it struck a partnership with the Central African Republic — the first country to legalize bitcoin as a legal tender in Africa and second globally only to El Salvador –to become its official crypto partner and an advisor to the president on crypto strategy and planning. “We’re there to advise the President on improving their technology infrastructure so that they can bring on widespread crypto adoption. The partnership with CAR brings that theory to actuality as one of the first steps the web3 platform would try to embark on is to help the government set up a national ID campaign– and, after that, implement KYC/AML standards that will go side-by-side with crypto education and financial literacy. For now, the year-old company will be basking in raising arguably the largest round at this stage for an African crypto/web3 company. MARA says it is building a suite of products that address various crypto-finance needs for the African audience. Though MARA claims that its users don’t need any prior crypto knowledge before using this retail app, the fact is that local solutions such as this are aplenty in Africa, like Coinbase Ventures-backed VALR and Yellow Card.