According to Mckinsey 2023 report, Africa will be home to the world’s largest working-age population by 2040. Africa is currently the fastest growing talent market for remote work.  But the problem is, remote workers struggle to access their income from employers abroad. They experience salary delays of up to 2 weeks, high withdrawal charges of up to 15% and they are constantly being short-changed by the local currency devaluation.

We built CodeLn Pay to solve this problem. CodeLn Pay is a crypto cross-border payment platform that allows African-based remote workers to get paid the same day, at an affordable charge of 1% and giving them the option to receive salaries in stable coins. They are able to seamlessly invoice employers, receive payment and save stable coins in their digital wallet. We have most of our users in Nigeria and Ghana and we are expanding to Kenya where we have gotten interest from users in that market. We are helping our users to overcome the challenges of cross-border payments that are especially unique to Africa and delivering a fast, secure, and cost-effective payment channels on chain.

Our current platform is a Web App on SEP 24, this award will be used to build our mobile app and integrate SEP 31 on Stellar. We have gathered feedback from our users from which we will upgrading our product.

Here are the feature breakdown below:

1. Upgrade Current Implementation to SEP31
   Frontend: Wallet UI implementation for SEP31 using the Stellar Wallet SDK
   Backend: API implementation for new functionalities

2. Mobile Application Design
   Wireframe/ LoFi design of app and User flow
   User Interface Design, Screen Design

3. Mobile Application Development (Flutter App)
   Frontend: Implement core functionality,  login, registration , invoicing
   Backend: API implementation for mobile core functions

4. Mobile Wallet Implementation
   Frontend: Pay in UI Implementation
   Backend: Backend REST APIs for integration with mobile frontend

5. Mobile Wallet Withdrawal Function

   Frontend: Cashing Out UI Implementation

   Backend: Backend integration to provide withdrawal for markets

Maybe in the future, but not in this submission

$90.1K

According to Mckinsey 2023 report, Africa will be home to the world’s largest working-age population by 2040. Africa is currently the fastest growing talent market for remote work. The problem is, African-based remote workers struggle to collect their income from employers abroad. They experience challenges around salary delays of up to 2 weeks, high withdrawal charges of up to 15% and and they are constantly being short-changed by the local currency devaluation. CodeLn Pay is an Impact first startup that is helping African youths to mitigate the challenges that are limiting seamless access to decent income. We are addressing financial access challenges that are especially unique to an emerging market like Africa.

Our current platform is a Web App on SEP 24 where we are able to do fiat to cryto transaction in Nigeria and Ghana. We are going to expand our offerings in these markets and scale to Kenya where we have gotten interest from this market. Our go-to-market strategy will include targeting freelancers and employers by offering a seamless, secure, and cost-effective payment solution. We will leverage platform partnerships, inbound marketing through SEO, content, and influencer partnerships. We will also initiate referral programs, personalized offers, hackathons, and in-app rewards.

Highlighting the CodeLnPay Story below to show our product progress, improvement and traction:

Our journey began in the SCF Bootcamp, we came in with just an idea and in 3 days, we were able to design our first prototype with the help of Stellar Engineers and our provided Mentor Stephen Deng, GP at DFS Lab. We took our prototype to market and based on user feedback, we were able to define what our MVP should look like starting with a Web App. 

We got our first grant from Stellar which we used to build our MVP, a web app using SEP 24 anchors: Finclusive, LinkIO, Paychant and Clickpesa. We were able to launch this on the Testnet. 

We got accepted in the Stellar & Draper University’s Astro Hacker House where we got support with launching our product and direct product feedback from our Stellar Mentor, Elliot Voris. With these help, we were able to launch our beta on the Mainnet. We were part of the successful participants who presented before the CEO Of Stellar, Denelle Dixon and Web3 Investor Tim Draper at the end of the Program, the pitch can be found here.

We were selected to present at Meridian 2024, our CEO gave a demo presentation on the progress of our product, speaker profile here.

We have successfully launched our beta web app on the mainnet using Paychant, link here. 

We have users signed up from our markets of focus majorly, Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya. Link to some user activities here.

Find a link with more details on our overall budget here.

Summary below:

Brief description: For this deliverable, we will kickstart our Mobile App Development and begin activating SEP 31 Anchor approvals for our current Web App:

Develop a Wireframe/ LoFi design of Mobile app accounting for each users flow through the system, User Interface Design, Screen Design, Develop Login, Registration and Identity verification processes and develop onboarding processes for users and all essential processes in the mobile app including invoicing, payment requests. Wrap up conversations with Stellar Anchors: Yellowcard and Flutterwave for SEP 31 Integration.

How to measure completion: Completed User Interface Designs and screens for Mobile App, Users Verification and KYC completed, User Onboarding Completed for new and existing users. Users should be able to issue invoice and request payments. Signed LOIs or approvals from SEP 31 Anchors and access to their APIs or SDKs.

Estimated date of completion: 12.5 weeks

Budget: 41,500

Brief description: For this deliverable, our focus will be on Testnet Anchor Integration, Wallet Implementation, Withdrawal Function, Stellar Transactions on Testnet  & Mobile App Test release:

Implement PayIn UX Flow and Wallet Screens to enable users to create stellar wallets, and request USDC salary payments, Backend Api implementation for pay in process, enabling users to create stellar wallets, and request USDC salary payments and test it  using the stellar test anchor, Implement Cashing out UI screens  and User Flow, ensure the ability to initiate withdrawal and ensure compatibility with the stellar test  anchor, Successful  implementation of cashing out  and cashing in processes on testnet to provide withdrawal options with  Linkio for Nigeria Payments  and Clickpesa for Rwanda and Kenya, Test Application on Anchors Testnet & Release test mobile application on Google playstore for select users.

How to measure completion: Demonstrate a complete test process on mobile to show invoicing, deposit and withdrawal for both employer and employee on Testnet:

Employer should be able to see initiate deposit flow on testnet, see rates and complete deposit transaction, Successful registration of employer transactions on the Backend, Employees should be able to see wallet balances and be able to initiate payout to their prefered currencies, Test the payout with simple transactions to Linkio and Clickpesa staging environment, Demonstrate a complete process on mobile, invoicing, deposit and withdrawal on Testnet. Test application on Google Play Store.

Estimated date of completion: 9 weeks

Budget: $30,600

Brief description: For this deliverable, our focus will be on Mainnet launch, SEP31 Upgrade, Deployment on Mainnet, Mobile App Public Release, User testing & Feedback: Wallet implementation for SEP31 using the Stellar Wallet SDK, API upgrade for SEP31, Conduct final tests for mainnet deployment and Release mobile app on google playstore, IOS to follow, final testing and Web App deployment of SEP31 integration on mainnet.

How to measure completion: Actual user demonstrates a complete process on mobile using real transactions to show invoicing, deposit and withdrawal on mainnet with the SEP 31 flow.

Estimated date of completion: 5 weeks

Budget: $18,000

CEO, Elohor Thomas.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/elohorthomas/

Elohor has over 10 years of work experience in sales, recruitment, and engineering. She has an MSc. in Systems Engineering (Artificial Intelligence Major) and she has previously built Machine Learning Projects. She is currently responsible for business, investment, and team management.

Discord: Elohor#6816

CTO, Philisiah Mwaluma.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/philisiah-mwaluma/

Discord: phili0847

She has over 8 years of work experience in software engineering and tech training. She heads the engineering team at CodeLnPay. She has strong experience building Fintech, Mobile and Web3 Products. She led the team to developing our current product on Stellar.

COO, Dennis Ruhiu.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennis-ruhiu-abb1b0ab/

Discord: dennisruhiu\_05285

Dennis has over 6 years of work experience in operations and engineering. He is responsible for design, frontend, and operations. He designed and built the frontend for our current product and Stellar integration.