Raise, a financial technology company, today announced a version of its security token platform for testing at Africa Tech Summit in Kigali, Rwanda today. Security tokens are blockchain-based digital representations of financial instruments such as securities, real estate, debt and commodities.
Raise is a software as a service tool for funds, companies and law firms to securely digitize share certificates, partnership units, and real estate assets. The platform creates customized digital securities that can be programmed with custom data, key performance indicators, and shareholder or limited partnership information. The software is built to simplify company ownership with the power of assets, data, and documents in one secure place. Raise’s is the first security token product announced on the continent.
A security token is a digital representation of a real-world financial asset (such as a share certificate, loan or land title). They are built with blockchain-based technology, making them highly secure digital assets. Security tokens dramatically improve the security of digital assets, ease fundraising and reduce the costs of cross-border transfer and compliance. Security tokens are gaining in popularity around the world – for their potential to improve capital markets and financial inclusion. NASDAQ recently referred to 2019 as the “Year of the Security Tokens”.
Raise’s platform is targeted for the private capital markets industry and is working with a list of companies, private funds and law firms for the launch of the stable software later this year. Raise previously announced partnerships with an association of 16 corporate law firms, Africa Legal Network to create a continental regulatory framework for security tokens and launched the African Digital Asset Framework, a project to create open source standards for blockchain technologies. The Framework project is supported by Ambassadors from the African Union, African Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.
Raise co-founders, CEO Marvin H. Coleby and CTO Eugene Mutai announced the news at Africa Tech Summit Kigali, where they spoke about the impact of blockchain technologies on capital markets. Coleby, an entrepreneur, securities lawyer and digital asset regulation authority, emphasised the potential for more accessible and liquid private markets. Marvin is originally from The Bahamas, a strong offshore financial jurisdiction with innovative corporate laws for private equity and assets.
“Today, it’s difficult to move shares between funds and companies. Navigating regulatory requirements, tracking securities ownership and raising financing can be difficult. We have to check and verify a multitude of complex requirements and documents to move assets that many of us already own. This makes private markets expensive and slow to operate – it can take weeks to transfer shares between consenting parties. As a result, private markets are not nearly as liquid as public markets, immobilizing assets and restricting financial inclusion. Blockchain technologies can encode compliance requirements and ease document processes that make private markets difficult to navigate.”
“We’re excited to contribute to a global movement to simplify private markets and securities innovation with this new product and look forward to further development updates this year. This is especially true on the African continent, we strongly believe that fluid and efficient capital markets can create enormous wealth for millions of people and transform intra-African trade.”
Raise is particularly passionate about the potential for security tokens and its platform to make capital markets on the African continent more efficient, transparent and ease cross-border trade of assets. Interested parties can sign up on the Raise website (getraise.io), or access its Telegram channel at: https://t.me/getraise.
