Please describe your proposed solution.
Ease of Real-world utility: For most crypto enthusiasts in Africa, one of the main questions, once they buy some crypto, is: what next? Usually, the answer is to hold and wait for price gains. This project aims at bridging the gap between asset holding and real-world utility. We aim to build a product where a person holding ADA or any other Cardano Native asset will be able to make payments for everyday goods and services seamlessly using their assets. The providers of these goods/services do not have to sign up but receive their payment in fiat through their preferred mobile-money payments platforms which are prevalent on the continent. If they so choose, the service providers can also create an account on the application and receive payments in Cardano Native assets.
According to the 2022 GSMA report, sub-Saharan Africa had 781 million mobile money accounts which represent over 50% of the global number of accounts. Additionally, the continent transacted a total value of $861 billion in the same year on mobile money accounts. These numbers are projected to increase over the coming years.
For the MVP, the focus will be integration with M-Pesa. M-Pesa is accessible in the majority of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa where there is high crypto adoption, making it ideal for bridging the fiat-to-crypto gap. As a result, the everyday utility for ADA will be achieved.
How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?
Our proposed solution addresses the challenge by building a service that helps on-ramp Africans into crypto through ADA by introducing real-world utility through merchant payments. Our goal is to roll out an MVP in Kenya which has the highest number of mobile money users with over 25M M-PESA users. This will bring more adoption into the Cardano ecosystem by enabling Africans to access and use Ada in everyday life.
Africa’s cryptocurrency market grew by 1200% between 2020 and 2021 with Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Tanzania ranking in the global top 20 in crypto adoption (State of Web 3 in Africa: Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, by Emurgo Africa and PWC 2023).
With over 4.5 million Crypto users in Kenya alone as of 2021, We believe that with the current age demographics, mobile and internet connectivity, and ready legislation, such a service will be readily embraced and by being the first of its kind and first to market, will have a significant impact on the Cardano ecosystem.
How do you intend to measure the success of your project?
The criteria that must be met to consider this project a success.
- Register at least 1000 users in the first 3 months of roll-out.
- Achieve a daily transaction volume of at least $10,000 after the first 3 months.
- Register at least 100 merchants to accept Ada payments for different goods and services within 3 months of roll-out.
- Maintain a registration count of 500 new users every month after the first 3 months.
Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?
Development will be based on milestones on which we plan to share the outputs and results through monthly progress meetings which will be open to the public.
With a sprint-based approach, we will constantly be using feedback to improve and scale the product. We will also build a metric logging feature to measure the features users are engaging with most, this will be used to further research and development for the next iteration.