I came across this new site Lily Africa https://lily.africa. They seem to be offering a platform that looks and works a lot like Binance, Paxful, OKX and ByBit, but I think they took it a step further.

They offer the direct trade (buying and selling) and swapping of e-currencies and payment method pairs, for instance, if you’re in the US with some money in your Zelle and need to get it down to a bank account in Nigeria, you look up a vendor there and start a “trade” with them. The vendors there can post new “deal” listings on their profiles, set their rates and all that, and “dealers” can trade with them by typing in their desired trade value.

Trading seems to be escrowed and they have dispute resolution and review systems just like Binance. What seems to set them apart is that they seem not just offering buying and selling of cryptocurrencies. But also the direct trading in e-currencies, gift cards, etc.

The trade chat works in a 2-stage process, unlike single stage on Binance.

I think the UI looks really weird, there’s a lot of rioting and competing and unnecessary colors and really weird looking designs and I think there’s a lot to improve in that area, but overall I find the concept really useful. I’m not sure the team behind this but I suspect they may be Nigerian, or West African at best because of how really well they seem to understand this problem.

There don’t seem to be any limitations to the use case of this I can think of at the moment and may end up become the most useful way to move money around today.

I created an account 2 days ago although I haven’t gotten any trade requests yet but I’m watching to see how it will pan out in the coming weeks.

Let me know what you think about the concept. Do you find it useful? And if no, what are your reasons? I’m not sure why anyone would want to launch a product like this in a time when the government is literally going after p2p platforms, but do you think regulations around p2p fintech and crypto exchanges would become favour able in the future if companies like these manage to find a sweet spot or to strike the right balance between regulatory compliance and market share?

Honest, well-informed and thoughtful feedback please.