Mesh.trade has issued what it believes to be Africa’s first-ever smart asset, in the form of a tokenised corporate bond.
The MOS Initiative (Die MOS), a private company focused on the development of Afrikaans mother tongue education in South Africa, chose Mesh.trade to tokenise, issue and service its 10-year floating rate corporate bond over its full lifecycle.
The bond was issued to raise R100-million for the expansion of Die MOS’s network of private schools offering Afrikaans mother tongue education. The MOS bond is a public offer to subscribe for 20 000 tokenised notes issued natively as smart assets on Mesh.trade.
The MOS bond is fully underwritten and guaranteed by the Trust vir Afrikaanse Kuns, Kultuur en Erfenis, part of the Dagbreek Trust family.
Connie Bloem, Mesh.trade founder and MD, says that Africa’s first digital corporate bond is an important milestone and will be the first of many other smart assets Mesh.trade will be introducing in the coming months.
“The future of finance, or Finance 3.0, is all about making the capital markets more accessible. Through Mesh we make this possible, with our decades of Fintech and capital markets experience. Our focus is on simplifying the process of raising capital and enabling this through our blockchain-based multi-sided capital markets ecosystem, giving businesses a viable and reliable alternative to raise the capital they need to fund their growth.”