Mango offers cash on-ramps through the thousands of OXXO convenience stores located throughout Latin America, providing the unbanked population of Mexico a cash entrance into cryptocurrency.
March 2022
Mexico
Development
There are an estimated 42 million unbanked Mexicans being left out of the digital currency revolution. According to the World Bank, only 37% of Mexicans have a bank account. It is estimated that 86% of all payments in Mexico are settled in cash and 95% of those cash payments are in between $100MXN ($5 USD) and $500MXN ($35 USD).
Mango, in partnership with Wyre, Stellar, OXXO, and Stripe, allows unbanked Mexicans a cash entrance into digital currency exchange, transfer, and investing. Below are the basic functionality points we aim to strive for.
Deposits
1. Users can deposit cash money by paying at their local OXXO convenience store. OXXO is a Mexican chain of convenience stores with thousands of locations across Latin America and represents nearly 20% of online transactions in Mexico. This gives the unbanked population of Mexico a cash entrance. (completed)
2. Users can deposit using debit cards. (completed)
3. Users can deposit using Stellar. (completed)
Withdrawals
1. Unbanked users can withdraw cash at their local OXXO convenience store. (completed)
2. Users can withdraw to their bank account. (in progress)
3. Users can consolidate their holdings into XLM and withdraw using Stellar. (completed)
Transfers
1. Users can transfer funds to other users in-app with registered email addresses. (completed)
Savings
1. Verified users can earn interest on their account holdings. (in progress)
KYC
1. Users must pass KYC requirements before depositing, whether that be cash deposits or bank deposits. Users upload their documents, which are then kept on Firebase servers. (completed)
Within 6 months, I would like Mango to have the back-end finished, security tested, and quality tested, all on the Test-net. In months 8 to 10, I would like Mango to have the opportunity to have the front-end evaluated, designed, implemented, and tested. From the 10 to 12 month mark, I would like to move Mango from the test environment onto the production environment and perform a limited pilot launch including the Stellar Community members which reside in Mexico. This plan includes a 1 to 2 month time reserve to help mitigate time constraints.
Mango is requesting $24,600 to support transition through the final development stages and into a limited pilot launch. The grant would help further development of the back-end with $4k, front-end with $6k, and conduct a test plan with $8k. $600 will be used for server costs and Twilio service for SMS verifications in-app. The remaining will be used for the pilot launch and will be separated as follows: $2k will be held on Wyre for Oxxo cash deposits; $4k will be kept in MXN cash on-hand for Oxxo cash withdrawals.
From the past couple months Mango has evolved from an idea into a working prototype hosted on the Android platform. There are of course some bugs that need to be worked out, further features desired to be implemented, and moving from test APIs to production APIs. The goal is to further develop, launch the prototype, and get a feel of the market.
Feedback
As always, feedback is important. If Mango gets the opportunity to move into the Community Discussion phase, below are a few topics I would like to get the community's view on:
Feedback
As always, feedback is important. If Mango gets the opportunity to move into the Community Discussion phase, below are a few topics I would like to get the community's view on:
