When Barclays Africa recently conducted the world’s first block-chain financial transaction between Seychelles and Ireland, many wondered if this could mean a new era in fintech for Africa. Barclays Africa Group Limited, formerly Amalgamated Banks of South Africa (ABSA) Group Limited is a South African subsidiary of Barclays Bank Plc; which provides financial services (for both personal and business clients). In order to achieve the feat of the world’s first blockchain bank transaction, Barclays Africa partnered with Wave; an award-winning cloud-based, integrated software and tools, that includes invoicing, accounting, payroll and payments. Wave is an innovative startup that gained prominence last year due to its participation in the TechStars-powered Barclays Accelerator programme in New York. The solution facilitated by Wave will help ameliorate many of the current inefficiencies being encountered in international trade. These inefficiencies include: Fraud: It prevents forgeries of documents. Error: It has an high error-free documentation rate Bulky paper work : Reduces the conventional stack of documents familiar with international trade. Time wasting: It allows documents to be treated within minutes or hours (depending on the transaction) Cost and ease of use: Above all, it’s easy to operate and cost effective because going by an estimate by The Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation , “7% of the global value of trade is absorbed by the cost of documents alone” In addition, the blockchain technology resides across a network of computers, which implies that whenever a new transaction occurs, the blockchain is authenticated across this distributed network, before including the transaction as the next block on the chain. Being the first of its kind to be achieved in a live trade (through Barclays Africa), many companies are on the lookout for ways to improve trade finance for possible pilot projects involving African clients. This indeed spells a new dawn for fintech in Africa as effective use of blockchain technology can to a large degree have a huge impact on the future of trade. By adopting this system, trade can be executed more easily and more economically while providing a simple and friendly user experience without changing existing workflows.