We tried African Fintech platforms and they all s**ked for our use case.
By: Uchi Uchibeke
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Fintech, Africa, Rewards, Millennials

It’s October 2020, I am thinking about the best way to issue airtime/credit for internet subscriptions to all participants of AfricaHacks 2020. I search the internet and find a few options, including a company that never replied to my Twitter DMs after an AfricaHacks team member’s fund got stock on their platform.

I document all the available options and look at the top Fintech platforms, including those valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. I keep looking, yet I’m not finding any option that solves our problem. “This sucks!” I mutter. We want to cover the airtime expenses of all active participants at the Hackathon regardless of where in the continent they live. Yet, no platform does this for many countries.

It’s night time so I head to bed. In bed, I remember a tweet about how Event organizers from the West should be mindful that the FREE online events that they organize and invite people to are not free for all, especially for people in Africa who pay for each megabyte of data they use. I’m restless; I turn from the left side of the bed to the right. And then back. I sit up, put on my slippers, and walk to the whiteboard in my study. Now staring at my whiteboard, I write down “Increase attendance and engagement” and head back to bed and sleep like a baby. Maybe I had I dream but it’s dawn but I cannot remember any dreams.

Fast forward a few months and it’s December, and AfricaHacks is upon us. I’m looking at the solution we built to issue airtime/data to participants. It’s a combination of at least four payment API. It works but participants have only one option and no say: they cannot pick between, say, airtime, swag, cash, Crypto, and many other benefits they would have loved to have. “This is bad,” I say to Christine. We use the solution at the Hackathon and it’s really bad! Many participants do not receive airtime because location coverage of the APIs is limited, and there is no transparency about expenses: we cannot easily reconcile failed vs. successful vs. disbursed vs. user-credited transactions. It’s a shitshow! A shitshow that cost us almost $10k in airtime credit and days of integration!

Chimoney is born

This must stop, I say to myself. I’m still at the Hackathon, and I start hacking on this idea called Chimoney (Uchi-Money, if you like). The concept is super simple; It should enable seamless gifting and exchange of value for community members at Hackathons that we organize! An event organizer or even an employer should click a button and send Chimoney to participants, employees, or others. The receiver should be able to redeem airtime, cash, Crypto, hold Chimoney, or other value instantly.

Chimoney solves all the problems I have described above:

As an event organizer or employer, I can quickly issue Chimoney, and I can be confident that my budget will not be exceeded.

As a receiver, I am not tied to an item or credit I do not want or need. Chimoney gives me options, and I can hold Chimoney forever.

There’s price transparency policed by the receiver of Chimoney.

Currently, Chimoney is still in its early stages, and we currently support the exchange of Chimoney for Airtime/data in 10 countries, including the US and Nigeria. To issue Chimoney, log in to chimoney.io and reach out to us to assist you with the process as the issuer’s workflow is currently in development.

If you’d like to learn more about Chimoney or are curious about fees, speed and timelines, check out the FAQ page on Chimoney.io.

Thanks for reading, and see you on the other side!