[Interview] Okouin Marius, Chief Operating Officer, IZICHANGE, Benin
IZICHANGE is a platform that help to make mobile money account to interact with online web wallet and vice versa. Okouin Marius is a Chief Operating Officer of this platform in Africa.
Can you tell us more about IZICHANGE and its function to businesses in Africa?
IZICHANGE is a platform that help to make mobile money account to interact with online web wallet and vice versa. We resolve the concern of online payments for unbanked populations, especially those in the most remote corners of our countries by giving them the possibility even without a VISA card to be able not only to work online and recover their earnings but also to buy software, video games, in other words shopping online and to acquire crypto currency through local currency.
IZICHANGE operates in the following countries in Africa: Bénin, Togo, Ivory coast, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Sénégal
Composed of a team of experts in digital economy and cryptocurrency, IZICHANGE allows you to carry out your currency exchanges with complete credibility, i.e. buy and sell your Dollars (PAYEER, PERFECT MONEY, ADVCASH) for Cfa via MTN Mobile Money, MOOV Money, AIRTEL Money Niger, MOBICASH Burkina Faso, ORANGE Money Niger, Western Union, Wari, Money Gram and Ecobank Mobile Banking.
When and why was IZICHANGE set up?
IZICHANGE was set up on 04/11/2019. The team is innovating by allowing and facilitating the purchase and sale of web currency and cryptocurrency with local currency safely and to allow the users to exchange digital currencies (i.e. Crypto Currencies such as bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ethereum, Dash, Ripple, Monero, Litecoin, Tron).
What would you say gives IZICHANGE the competitive edge?
We combine the most secure tools on our platform and guarantee our customers speed in all their operations. Besides that so far the market has responded favorably to our services. We have brought innovation that fulfilled a need. If I can summarize it in four important things, it is all about:
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Speed
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Security
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Reliability
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Covering different countries
What makes your company unique from other companies which offers similar services if there are?
IZICHANGE's uniqueness is to provide a customer journey worthy of the name. Our services are full automated . From registration to after-sales service we have a chat room available to address customer concerns.
How is competition in your industry and how are you wearthering it?
We have recently been confronted with an explosion of small companies that just copy our business model even the website. Despite this, we try to keep very competitive prices and put much more emphasis on our strengths, which are customer satisfaction, speed and security of the platform. Besides that, so far the competition has not been of much issue to us because for a while now, we have seen an expansion of our activities to other countries by adding new means of payment and new services. Which is in line of our main goal which is to cover all of Africa.
What are IZICHANGE’s plans for 2021?
As we keep getting new partnerships with differents aggreator of payment and in addtion with different new cryptocurrencies on our platform like DOGECOIN, WAVES, TRON, etc. This gives us a big hope that our 2021 plans will be achieved. Those plans include: Developing new services, conquer other markets, improve the image of the company and obtain a regulatory framework for our activities. Last but not least, we are on the way, to have a new office in other countries starting by TOGO.
We also plan to go to the International market by allowing our users to buy on amazon and other platform.