Patricia customers to receive first batch of repayments in November as company appoints trustee

Patricia has engaged the services of DLM Trust, an SEC-licensed trust company to handle the disbursement of repayments to customers.

DLM Trust, a trust company licensed by Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), will handle the disbursement of repayments to customers of Nigeria-focused crypto platform Patricia. It is Patricia’s latest move to repay $2 million in customers’ assets lost in a hack last year. DLM Trust confirmed the partnership in a statement published on Nairametrics on Tuesday. The company will serve as an escrow trustee—a third party that holds money or an asset on behalf of the other two parties in a transaction.

Per the DLM statement, the first batch of repayments to Patricia customers will be disbursed starting November 20, 2023. Kehinde Lawal, senior associate at DLM Trust, told TechCabal that the company has received some funds from Patricia to issue refunds to customers. In September, TechCabal reported that the Lithuania-based company had raised some funds to repay customers, though its CEO, Hanu Fejiro didn’t provide further details of the investment.

“The funds are coming from Patricia and its partners/investors. We are acting as a trustee [and] making sure that we pay the customers as at when due. Payment plan and disbursement strategies will be made available to the users in the coming days,” Lawal said.

However, this repayment plan is tricky because DLM Trust doesn’t handle digital assets and its regulator—the SEC—has a firm stance against cryptocurrency. In May, Bloomberg reported that the SEC was considering allowing tokenized coin offerings on licensed digital exchanges that are backed by assets including equity, debt, and property with the exemption of crypto.

Last week, Fejiro confirmed to TechCabal that Patricia is asking users to convert their debt tokens to company shares which will be managed by an SEC-licensed company. Lawal disclosed that the plan is still in the works. “There have been discussions around converting debt to equity. It’s subject to the users’ discretion. And it is a part of the overall debt management strategy. That is in motion,” he said.