Flux

Flux provides a platform for secured fiat peer to peer (p2p) payment on the blockchain as well as onboard the unbanked by providing an instant bank account for them.

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Inspiration

Providing secured and seamless peer-to-peer and merchant payment is still a common challenge among low-income earners (especially) or financially excluded people leading to little or no information about their financial history. The consequence of this is that they are further marginalised from credit facilities and other financial services like insurance. This is illustrated below:

Payment Challenges --> Security Breaches --> Lack of Financial Data --> Exclusion from other Financial Services

What it does

Flux provides a platform for secured fiat p2p and b2b payment on the blockchain as well as onboard the unbanked and provides an instant bank account for them with us. Further verification for the instantly banked individuals will be done via our bank agents. Users of our product can either use the product via USSD or Dapps. Users of Flux have a digital wallet to perform secured payment transaction on the blockchain. The digital wallet mirrors the value of the user actual bank account balance. It also allows for payment of low-value transactions of any amount via the 'NairaToken'; the value of which is actually the Naria. In the future, the platform plans to be an aggregator of the various financial service provider where users of smartphones can easily make secured transactions with another financial service provider from just one app.

Benefits of the payment platform:

  1. A secured peer-to-peer fiat (Naira) payment platform on the blockchain network via used and dApps (Decentralised Applications).
  2. The use of google maps API to collect location data at every instance of payment
  3. The use of payment data to track users spending pattern for fraud detection via data analytics
  4. The use of payment data and location data to provide credit facilities and for marketing purposes.
  5. Self-serviced banking for the unbanked via USSD from the comfort of their home.

How I built it

Onboarding:

  1. The user enters a USSD code (*217#). They get a response to select what language they And are asked if they have a bank account (either in English language or any indigenous language). 2a. If users have a bank account, they are asked for their BVN no. The BVN no is used to collect users’ basic data from NIBSS API and create an account for the user on the blockchain network for payment transactions. 2b. If a user does not have a bank account, we assume the user uses a feature phone and from there are asked basic question in their initially selected language of choice. This information is used to create a bank account for them instantly and an account on the blockchain network. Thereby banking the unbanked.

Identification/Data Collection: A. For the users of smartphones, they are required to download our application which tracks their location at every time of usage. The location data and data of payments made and payment received are used to build a profile for the user. This profile details the user's transaction volume as well as details of payment made and received for financial profiling and verification of address which can be used to extend other financial services such as credit facilities and marketing purpose to the user. If a user whose location appears more frequently, the location data can be used to verify user identity as well as verify user location. B. For the users of the feature phone, since we do not have access to their location data, we use the identity of other individuals whom they make payment to or receive payment from to build a financial profile for them. Financial Services:

Payments: Via our USSD feature or App, users can pay for anything worth any amount performing the transaction securely on the blockchain at little or no cost. Users can make payment using the USSD followed by AMOUNT, RECIPIENT PHONENUMBER (serve as Blockchain public key) and PIN. The transaction details are sent and verified on the blockchain network, which is then synced with the NIBSS database. This resolves the primary challenge of security. Payment is also securely done via our app by smartphone users.

Challenges I ran into

We encountered technical challenges connecting with NIBSS API which we later resolved. Also, we encountered challenges at coming up with a solution that easily banks the unbanked as well as making payment secure and seamless for them.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

As a team, we are proud of being able to come up with a solution that banks the unbanked as well as making payments secure for them using the blockchain technology and USSD

What I learned

We learned the value of TeamWork, discipline and how to think fast on the post.

What's next for Flux

In our effort to bank the unbanked, we are creating a new system of banking
Community Banking.

The goal of this system is to extend credit facilities to the newly banked (formerly unbanked) on our system.

We would provide them with credit facilities based on formed community.

We also score them based on community credit score.

When up to two (2) members of a community of ten (10) defaults, it affects the credit score of the community and hampers the opportunity to get another credit facility.

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