NEWS AND UPDATES

Emergent International Payment Systems Creates Secure Electronic Payments Infrastructure in Kolwezi, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Emergent International Payment Systems, a portfolio company in the The Fresnel Companies, had a busy push in support of its City of Kolwezi-branded re-loadable Visa card and payments platform. The city government in Kolwezi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo passed legislation that incentivized and ultimately required companies in mining and other local industries to utilize the designed platform for future payments of taxes, licenses and fees. This is a tremendous opportunity for Emergent that culminated in August, as it co-hosted, alongside the city government, over 100 corporate partners within the region to describe the benefits of our secure electronic-payments infrastructure. The entire program, which Emergent has branded as the “E-Pay Certified City” makes Kolwezi one of the first major cities in sub-Saharan Africa to convert its payment infrastructure to electronic payments. Other cities are beginning to contact Emergent for more information about our company and capabilities. To see a video about the launch of Emergent’s City of Kolwezi Payments card, please click here.

Re-Loadable Visa® to Expand into the Congo

After the success of the municipally branded Kolwezi re-loadable Visa®, Emergent is actively planning rollouts in Lubumbashi and Kinshasa, the two largest cities of the DR Congo. Additionally, Emergent’s distribution partner has recently opened an office in the Congo to facilitate the launch of this highly successful card to help serve the mining and the mining-hauling industries.

Emergent International Payment Systems’ partner HarborX announces two patent-pending technologies to secure crypto-currency transactions.

Another Fresnel portfolio company, Cipherium is licensing some of its patented technology to portfolio company HarborX. HarborX employs two patent-pending technologies to secure crypto-currency transactions: It uses a decentralized dynamic authentication network, and a decentralized private key management technology. Crypto currency operates on a cryptographic infrastructure where the user will have a public key, for example a Bitcoin address, which links to a private key that remains private. HarborX takes that private key, shreds it into pieces, encrypts each piece, then stores them on different computers on a network of nodes. This architecture makes it more difficult for a hacker to compromise because the honeypot is eliminated. One thing that the world as a whole has figured out is that decentralization is one way to beat hackers. Assuming everything of value is stored separately across multiple computers—serving as nodes across a network. Developers from both Cipherium and Emergent International are working together to identify overlaps where this technology can also be applied to the pre-paid market to offer additional payment solutions, wrapped in bulletproof security.