Bonafide has acquired the necessary licenses and partnerships to operate a digital dollar wallet platform. We also have engineering resources to bring the project to live. However we are seeking support from the community via a bug bounty system to improve security.
We are seeking $50,000 to complete the project build, launch and get our first 50k users on board.
We are in the prototype stage. Our beta will launch in Dec 2021. We haven’t raised money yet and the project is currently funded by our parent company, Moneymie.
Bonafide is on a mission to include 1b+ Africans into the global economy by providing digital dollar wallets for Africans everywhere.. At the very basic level, Bonafide will offer all Africans the ability to save, send, receive and earn dollars.
Problem
The world is a global village, yet 1bn people cannot easily transact in the world’s dominant currency. 1bn+ people do not have access to “globally” available money movement services like paypal. A substantial portion of the world’s trade including trade between African countries are done in United States dollars, creating problems for thousands of businesses in countries who do not have easy access to save or pay in dollars. This makes payments for imports, tuition, software, and other dollar bill payments a painful process. Current alternatives include owning domiciliary accounts with local banks who partner with a correspondent bank. This option is not easily accessible for most citizens. It is also very expensive to move money - it costs $45 on a minimum, 3-5 days.
Poor people are most disproportionately affected by unpredictable inflation. African currencies have suffered from abnormal levels of inflation over the last 3 decades. As a result, networth of Africans half every other 3 years due to currency devaluations and seek stable currencies to save in. The top 5 African countries with the lowest levels of inflation use the same currency the CFA which is benchmarked to France’s franc.
The coronavirus pandemic has also accelerated the growth of remote work. Companies like Deel ($5.5b) and Papaya have reached unicorn valuations by making it easy to pay remote teams. However, there are more people in the freelance (organized and unorganized) space who still find it difficult to get paid. With increase in digital adoption and lack of local unemployment, we expect the trend of Africans working remotely with global companies to be the norm and not the exception.
Current alternatives include getting an account on Transferwise (very few people know this, even Transferwise doesn’t publicize that you can open a US bank account from Nigeria for obvious reasons), or asking a friend or family member to set up PayPal accounts on their behalf and access via VPN.
Lastly, remittance to sub-saharan Africa still remains the most expensive (~8.02%) in the world, according to the World Bank Remittance Report March 2021. This is due to illiquidity and the high costs of movement of dollars to local currencies through the big banks
Bonafide is a USDC powered dollar wallet service that lets anyone send, receive, make online payments, and earn yield. Features include:
- Receive money via USDC, wire transfer, zelle and in the future, push-to-card and paypal.
- Send money via peer-to-peer, peer-to-business, wire transfers to any dollar account worldwide and USDC.
- Instant peer-to-peer and peer-to-business payments.
- Earn interest on your saved digital dollars.
- No-loss weekly $2000 raffle draws. Users get their money back if they don’t win after 30 days.
We’ve chosen a single currency focus since the majority of international transactions from Africa are in USD. This also helps us provide a super simple app, avoid feature distraction, simplify regulatory concerns, and reduce the amount of technical effort needed to ramp up quickly were we to do multiple currencies.
There are key foundational beliefs that show the “Why” of our approach to solving the problem.
- Stablecoins is an innovation that combines the stability of being pegged to a fiat currency and the speed and efficiency of crypto-money movements on blockchains. We have chosen the USDC for simplicity of communication, stability, and backing from Circle, Coinbase, and Stellar. Also, USDC is a top 10 digital currency and on leading blockchains, with interoperability with Mastercard and Visa. Bonafide uses USDC specifically in the following ways:
- To store value in secure circle wallets and interoperable with 5 different blockchains.
- On-ramp and off-ramp from and to exchanges, other wallet services, and financial partners.
- Yield provision via staking in defi-protocols and fixed deposits.
- By providing dollar wallets to Africans where they can receive money swiftly, we would be solving multiple challenges of transactions today with one solution.
- Receiving money (remittances, salaries)
- We want to remove friction 100% for the sender of money. They should be able to use payment methods and currency they are already used to. Users will be able to receive money via USDC, wire transfer, zelle and in the future, push-to-card and paypal. The problem of off-ramping to local currency is transferred from the sender to the beneficiary who has this figured out already through local bureau de changes. Nonetheless, we will overtime provide off-boarding to other currencies via APIs provided by Flutterwave and Venture Garden Group in countries where it makes sense to do so.
- Sending money (purchases, personal dollar transactions)
- Payments in dollars will be seamless. Any user will be able to send money via peer-to-peer, peer-to-business, wire transfers to any dollar account worldwide and USDC.
- Users love short-term rewards, however current methods are not sustainable for startups , do not build loyalty nor healthy for consumers. Bonafide’s no loss prize taps into the reward-loving behavior of users and offers them an opportunity to win $2000 weekly.
Target audience
While we are targeting Africans anywhere, we will be focusing our firepower on a beachhead market - audiences based in Africa that currently need to engage in dollar-related transactions at least once a month.
- Upper and middle-class income earners who pay bills in dollars. These bills include tuition, investments, and family support.
- Individuals earning from remote freelance work. These are not structured employment contracts and payments are made on a per-job basis. These include freelance developers, writers, and designers.
- Small and mid-sized African entrepreneurs, side-hustlers and businesses making global payments. These include tech-enabled companies, startups, and traders.
- P.S. We have not mentioned Africans in diaspora as a target audience because the would be major“senders” on our network. Having taking the stress of on onboarding out, we expect remittance senders to also increase exponentially as wallet holders increase.
We estimate the 3 personas combined is over 2 million users across Africa.
Why Now
- Stablecoins: USDC is a top 10 digital currency and on leading blockchains, with interoperability with Mastercard and Visa.
- Advancements in DEFI protocols have made it possible to offer new financial services atop wallets.
- Compared to 5 years ago, on-ramp and off-ramp fiat partners now exist for currencies.
- Identity services now exist in many African countries and make deploying compliant KYC/AML/BSA policies a possibility.
How we grow
- Bonafide users will be able to stake money in o-loss weekly $2000 raffle draws. Users get their money back if they don’t win after 30 days. 60m Nigerians bet and lose their staked money. This is more than the number of banked accounts in the country. A no-loss prize is a
- Bonafide is adopting an age-long discovery method attributed to Paypal, which is the ability to transfer value to non-users. Bonafide users will be able to send USD to email addresses and phone number of non-users. This will be further amplified via Twitter/Instagram giveaways of micro-amounts to users.
- Leverage well-known African influencers to reach new users.
- Access to proprietary channels of technology talent.
Future Opportunities
In the future, We will have the opportunity to offer dollar based financial services directly or in partnership with other players such as Cards, locked savings, investments, p2p lending, p2p fx and BNPL.
