Stellar Community Fund

By Digitpay Finance

Stellar Rails for African Payments

SCF #42

$80.0K

Build

Awarded

Products & Services

This submission will directly integrate three Stellar building blocks (Bridge, Stellar Disbursement Platform, and Stellar Wallets Kit) into DigitPay’s existing payment architecture to create a unified, cross-border payment network.

Specifically, this submission will add/improve the following services:

Instant Cross-Border Payment Settlement (via Bridge) Currently, there are already implementations of cross-border payments in DigitPay that rely third party banking rails. By integrating Bridge's API into our currency-exchange and transaction modules, we will enable customers and merchants in different countries to pay and settle instantly on Stellar as the invisible interchange layer. This will naturally drive more and more transaction through this route as it happens on-chain.
Automated Bulk Merchant Payouts (via SDP) DigitPay currently settles merchant payments per transaction. By integrating the Stellar Disbursement Platform (SDP) alongside our backend scheduled jobs. This will allow us to batch hundreds of daily merchant settlements that will happen on the Stellar blockchain into a single, parallel payout operation on the Stellar network.
Crypto-Native Wallet Checkout (via Stellar Wallets Kit) We will improve our merchant checkout flow to support Web3 users. By integrating Stellar Wallets Kit on our frontend, users will be able to connect wallets like Freighter or Lobstr directly to DigitPay, allowing them to pay merchants from their wallet natively with XLM alongside our existing fiat options.

Requested Budget

$80.0K

Traction Evidence

Video showing our number onchain via our Blockrader dashboard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEf_44jMrg4

social links:
https://x.com/digitpayfinance
https://www.linkedin.com/company/digitpayfinance/?viewAsMember=true
https://www.youtube.com/@digitpayfinance
https://www.instagram.com/digitpayfinance/

Tranche 1 (Deliverable Roadmap) - MVP

Tranche 1 — MVP (Integration Foundations)

Brief Description: Establish the core integration layer for all three Stellar building blocks. This includes the Bridge API service module within the DigitPay backend for cross-border FX quoting and transfer initiation, a working wallet connection flow using Stellar Wallets Kit on the frontend, and initial SDP environment setup with the first manual batch disbursement successfully processed on Stellar testnet.

How to Measure Completion:

A bridge-provider NestJS service module is live, capable of fetching FX quotes and creating cross-border transfer records via the Bridge API, demonstrated with a working API call from a local/staging DigitPay environment
Stellar Wallets Kit is integrated into the merchant checkout frontend page, a user can connect a Freighter wallet, and the wallet public key is captured and displayed
SDP is deployed (Docker/standalone) and connected to a DigitPay staging database, at least one successful test disbursement of USDC/XLM to 3+ Stellar testnet addresses is demonstrated via SDP's dashboard or API logs

Budget: $16,000

Tranche 2 (Deliverable Roadmap) - Testnet

Tranche 2 — Testnet (Full Flow Integration)

Brief Description: Complete the end-to-end flows for all three integrations on Stellar testnet. This includes processing a full cross-border payment (customer pays → Bridge settles on Stellar → merchant balance credited), automating the nightly merchant batch payout cycle via SDP triggered from DigitPay's scheduler, and enabling Stellar wallet payments at merchant checkout to settle and reconcile correctly in the DigitPay backend.

How to Measure Completion:

Full cross-border payment flow is demonstrated end-to-end on testnet: a customer-side payment triggers a Bridge transfer, a Stellar USDC/XLM transaction is created, and the webhook updates the DigitPay merchant's ledger balance, recorded as a screen-captured demo
DigitPay's scheduled jobs module successfully triggers an automated SDP batch payout daily at a configured time, demonstrated with logs showing 10+ simulated merchant payouts processed in parallel on Stellar testnet with reconciliation records written to the DigitPay ledger
Stellar Wallets Kit checkout flow is fully wired to the backend: a user connects a wallet, signs a payment transaction, the backend verifies the Stellar transaction hash on-chain, and the merchant's DigitPay balance is credited, demonstrated with a working testnet flow recording

Budget: $24,000

Tranche 3 (Deliverable Roadmap) - Mainnet

Tranche 3 — Mainnet Launch

Brief Description: Deploy all three integrations to the DigitPay production environment on Stellar mainnet. This includes live cross-border transactions processed through Bridge on mainnet, real merchant payout batches settled on Stellar mainnet via SDP, and the Stellar Wallets Kit payment option live for all DigitPay merchant storefronts. Publish developer/user-facing documentation on how the Stellar integrations work.

How to Measure Completion:

BlindPay/Bridge cross-border integration is live on DigitPay production: at least 50 real cross-border transactions successfully settled on Stellar mainnet, totalling a minimum of $500 in settled value, all verifiable on-chain via Stellar Explorer
SDP is live on DigitPay production: at least 4 automated merchant payout batch runs successfully completed, each disbursing to 5 or more merchants on Stellar mainnet, verifiable on-chain and in DigitPay's merchant dashboard
Stellar Wallets Kit "Pay with Stellar Wallet" option is live on all DigitPay merchant checkout pages on production: at least 25 successful real wallet payments on mainnet from a minimum of 5 unique wallet addresses, all verifiable on-chain via Stellar Explorer
At least 10 merchant stores have Stellar wallet checkout actively enabled and live on their DigitPay storefront pages, confirming merchant-side adoption beyond internal testing
100% of all mainnet transactions across all three integrations are publicly verifiable on Stellar Expert explorer, providing a transparent and objective audit trail for completion verification
Public documentation published covering: how cross-border settlement works via Stellar, how merchant payouts are processed via SDP, and how users connect Stellar wallets to DigitPay, hosted on DigitPay's website or developer docs page

Budget: $32,000

Team

We currently has 9 team members:

Jude Somto – CEO & Marketing Lead | Backend Engineer | 9+ years of experience | https://www.linkedin.com/in/judesomto/

Cinton Onuigbo – Co-Founder / CTO | Full stack Engineer | 12+ years of experience | https://www.linkedin.com/in/clinton-onuigbo-a5112810b/

Amarachi Ugwu – Co-Founder / COO | Full stack Engineer | 7+ years of experience | https://www.linkedin.com/in/amarachiugwu/

Chidimma Ugwu – Product Designer | 5+ years of experience | https://www.linkedin.com/in/chidimma-ugwu/

Albert Chinonso – Frontend & Mobile Developer | 4+ years of experience | https://www.linkedin.com/in/onyishichukwunonso/

Gloria Onuoha – Social Media Manager | 5+ years of experience | https://www.linkedin.com/in/gloria-onuoha-98858a232/

Arinze Ogbechi – Backend Developer | 5+ years of experience | https://www.linkedin.com/in/ogbechi-arinze/

Godwin Odenigbo – Co-Founder | Backend Developer | 8+ years of experience | https://www.linkedin.com/in/godwin-odenigbo-251755174/

Benjamin – Community Manager | 2+ years of experience | https://www.linkedin.com/in/odoh-benjamin-uchenna-37394b229/

Our key team members have built in other companies ranging from fintechs to blockchain institutions namely estable-io, nairagramllc, https://www.linkedin.com/company/sky/ and many others