SCF #13
Community Vote
LINK Business

web3 cross border payments infrastructure for Africa

Awarded
Awarded
Budget request:
$
140,000
*
WebsiteCode

Project Stage

Introduction

Category

DeFi
Payments
Tools
Wallets

Based in

UK

Team size

10

Active since

July 2022
Products & Services

Launch and Grow:

LINK Business

International and Local businesses are finding it hard to set up locally and extend their services in the Nigerian (African) market; some of the problems are:

  • No or little access to local infrastructure
  • Inability to do reconciliation from local currency
  • Inability to hedge against rising inflation
  • Limited payment options to operate locally
  • Liquidity and settlements speed
  • Compliant on & off ramps are still a hassle

How LINK Business solves this:

  • Get NGNC straight from the source. Send and receive naira digital currency on-chain. All through a single portal for payments.
  • On & Off Ramp (SEP 24 implementation)
  • Treasury & Custodial Dashboard
  • Move NGNC from Stellar across multiple chains
  • Non Nigerian Businesses and Nigerian business alike small or big, defi based or traditional based now have access not only to possibilities of defi but Local infrastructures to get paid and to pay as well.
  • We want to bridge Africa’s Internet of value. LINK is that bridge between the world, defi and traditional rails built for global businesses.
  • Facilitate on ramps from Point of sale devices to your dashboard
  • Platform: Web App - https://ngnc.online
  • Developers Doc: https://docs.ngnc.online/ngnc-bridge-docs/
  • SEP24 is literally 90% done,

Launching in other markets in Q3

Ghana, Cameroon just to mention a few, already the Ghanaian cedis asset has been issued on Stellar with payment capabilities internally, we are looking to launch it and we are onboarding more business customers that would want this kind of service utilizing Stellar's blockchain infrastructure.

Build

WAVY

WAVY is a stablecoin utility super app/custodial wallet for the world, think Binance and Revolut but for stablecoins

  • Permissionless on and off ramps leveraging anchor partnerships on the network (on the roadmap as well would be to build sort of a bridge on soroban smart contract that would allow cross chain)
  • USDC yields from local currencies leveraging yUSDC (Panning out building a contract as well on Soroban that allows users supply and borrow)
  • FOCUS IS BUILDING the Largest Stablecoin P2P Marketplace where users get to buy/sell stablecoins with other stablecoins at their own terms, in this case we are building our own asset escrow contract on Soroban that would hold the both stables until the both users sign through their wallets.


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Previous Project(s)
SCF #10
Award recipient
LINK
Cross border payments infrastructure for Africa
Learn more
Progress so far

Progress thus far:

LINK P2P Platform:

=> Grew our waitlist to 53k in 4 months.

=> Made early revenue $xxk with a set of whitelisted users

=> Launched Stellar USDC cards.

=> Powered/piloted Nigeria-Europe, Nigeria-Kenya, Nigeria-USA payments on our platform with anchor OTC payments at the back.

=> Made the decision to pause updates to the product after carrying out in-depth research and market analysis. Pivoting to WA/VY, a platform optimised for stablecoins. To launch in Q3.


Business Platform:

=> Currently in the works based on customer feedback.

=> Making finishing touches on SEP24, to bring back Naira deposits and withdrawals on Stellar.

=> Research on the early version of our cross-chain widget for NGNC (We would build this on Soroban hopefully in the coming rounds)

=> Onboarded and piloting Stellar Naira capabilities on business platforms like Lobstr, Centiiv, Kotani Pay, Getpaid, Bonafide, Benkiko and 25 other partners to mention but a few.

=> We plan to update the Multichain/Cross-chain widget to Soroban in the long run to power NGNC. It'll be taken live on our business platform.

=> Partnered up with a PSSP license provider in Nigeria allowing us to provide banking services.

=> Right on track to approach PMF from early indicators.

Goals
To get there, we request a budget of  
$
140,000
*
  to:
Additional information

Revenue Model & Funding

a. 1 - 1.5% on On & Off Ramps (on APIs, Payment links, ramps for wallets)
b. x% on onchain FX
c. x.x% from the 7% USDC Yields
d. FREE in dashboard Transfers
e. FREE for DeFi Card Payments

Market & Industry Research

a. CROSS BORDER PAYMENTS LANDSCAPE

Total Addressable Market (TAM): $77bn

Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM): $25.6bn

Our opportunity: $5bn

b. web3 & Crypto opportunity

Africa's Population: 1.4bn

Nigeria's Population: 200mn

Crypto users in Nigeria: 33.4mn

Our opportunity: 10mn


Strengths:

  • The team has strong experience across the various fields required to build LINK
  • We have connections with a vast network of Nigerian student bodies globally which contribute heavily to the cross border market size
  • We also are in active talks with regulators in CBN as well as to how to better navigate our product and how a pilot could potentially be a part of the existing banking infrastructure
  • Existing infrastructures can help us scale faster compliantly as its easier to build and integrate with regulated partners and platforms ie. Flutterwave
  • NIBBS which powers interbank payouts in Nigeria allows a compliant and instant settlement infrastructure
  • We are the anchors of the only multichain NGN stablecoin, with the only existent interoperable protocol.

Weaknesses:

  • The monopolistic and bureaucratic structures that exist in Nigeria Pose as a challenge especially in License applications for example
  • Cost of building an anchor service, especially when only one existed before we came onboard, was challenging.
  • Arbitrage services taking advantage of our platform

Opportunities:

  • Be the first fully compliant low risk Naira ramp (Anchor).: SEP24 is literally 90% done, a low risk naira ramp is one built on decentralized peer-to-peer agent network on the tradifi side and thats what we built out, it took us months to get here but we finally did and thats what is going to go live on our SEP24 , if you want whitelisted access on Lobstr to test out you could send your mail so you see what it looks like.
  • Establish ourselves as Hybrid bridge platform first company for global trade ability of the Naira
  • We are the only Cross border payments platform solving this issue in this way

Threats:

  • Increased Sanctions & regulations on digital assets and crypto
  • Local regulators and institutions threatened by users holding alternative currencies that are not the e-naira
  • Local monopolies


Competition

Competition

How we are better

Resources & Relationships

https://docs.google.com/document/d/15SNa7XpeBD-rSzbqt1i6iQ_Iy0qfz9v-Sk3i56CNKQk/edit?usp=drivesdk

Marketing & Sales

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16EjrIWRq--in8RfX0wz8fiqf3vVhma4y3PFCGSTflQQ/edit?usp=sharing

Pitch deck
No items found.
Deliverables
First Deliverable

Stellar NGNC API's

Steps in getting there:

1. Completing the backend work , so we successfully push and deploy via self hosted APIs , Stellar NGNC capabilities for businesses and developers building in and out of stellar this includes developer tool, on/off ramps, LINK Bridge product etc

2. Switch on Stellar Network on the bridge configuration

3. Clean and comprehensive developer docs


Reviewer instructions

WE ADDED A WALKTHROUGH VIDEO HERE:  https://clipchamp.com/watch/OiB0veS7s8Y


LOGIN DETAILS:

Visit https://app.ngnc.online/

testscf@stellar.org

123456789

For #1 & 2

1. Reviewer should visit https://app.ngnc.online/signup

2. SCF Test as Business Name

3. Use test_scf14@stellar.org as Business Email

4. Get access to the bridge dashboard.

5. Reviewer should also visit

https://www.postman.com/spaceflight-explorer-27514502/workspace/link-bridge a test environment with all the Bridge API endpoints already setup.

6. Copy, API secret key, Business ID, and LINK_tag from The bridge dashboard and add to the required fields in the test environment to test out all api ends.

-The on/off ramps endpoint require a secret key, business id, and link_tag

-While all get requests require just a secret key but for the get transaction api which also requires a business id as a param.

Can also get more detail explanation on every endpoint or parameter from https://docs.ngnc.online


For #3

Clean & Comprehensive Docs fully ready for SDK and custom API Integration:  https://docs.ngnc.online/ngnc-bridge-docs/

Usecases (FULLY COMPLIANT ON/OFF RAMPS FOR NAIRA)

Links:
https://docsend.com/view/vq5zdwv8ekjcetcc
LINK.IO LTD

LINK is building web3 Cross border payments infrastructure for Africa. To accomplish this, we're building: - WAVY (cka LINK P2P): Stablecoin Utility Super App for the World. - LINK Business (Paystack/Stripe for web3): web3 payments infra for global businesses, developers and payment service providers bridging traditional rails, DeFi rails and our settlements stablecoin NGNC for scale. - NGNC is a fiat backed Naira multichain stablecoin built for settlements.

Team

Core Team:

Emmanuel Evarist (ebuka#7034)- CEO/ Co-Founder

Computer Engineer and Programmer with 7years of experience, ex-CEO & Founder FINC Arts (product design and Brand studio), ex-CEO & CTO FINC Markets, an algo trading platform for forex traders in emerging economies like Nigeria and India

https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmanuel-evarist-47a4a31b5

Marvel Ekpo (Iam_Marvel#0936)- COO/ Co-Founder

Product designer, Former COO FINC Arts and FINC Markets: a brand and design studio, FINC Markets which offered better trading algorithms for traders.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marvel-ekpo-b0182918b

Tomisin Leshi (Unique-CTO#7629)- CTO/ Co-Founder

Software Engineer, Fullstack developer, ex- Software Engineer Cyprus Robotics (Robotics Manufacturing Company), ex-Software Engineer himylink (A digital Online Marketplace), ex-Backend Engineer Stritch (SME Shopping experiences)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomisin-leshi

Victor Nwaejie (ReKs#2107)- Brand Director/ Product Lead

Product designer, Former Graphic Designer at VOIS Cyprus: an NGO that tackles problems in the lives of students studying and living in Cyprus.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/victor-nwaejie-46783819a