Bongo

Inspiration

Grew up in Democratic Republic of Congo and experienced the pain of sending and receiving money in Africa. I visited Kenya and learned about Mobile Money which allow people to send money through their phone carrier.

What it does (future)

We’re building the Wechat pay for Central Africa except we're also their bank. Most people in Central Africa don't have bank accounts and use cash or mobile money to pay for things. We want to start with an app that lets you send money across any phone carrier for no fees and slowly eliminate the need for mobile money. The entire economy will flow through us and as a result we’ll help them build credit, invest, get loans, and insurance.
We want to help Central Africa skip a generation, the same way Wechat did for China.

Appendix - Mobile money is a way for people to send money through their phone carrier. It's instant and most of Africa use this. The problem is there are many phone carriers (3 dominant ones in Congo). As a result, there’s no peer to peer payments and many still use cash.

Unique use cases

We support all payments - peer to peer, send money from abroad back home (remit), payment for services (electricity, phone data, airtime, rent). With those payments, they can build their credit score, get short term loans, insurance, and invest back in the government. It’s similar to how Whatsapp disrupted communication starting with international calls.

How we built it

Prototype in iOS

What's next for Bongo

Integrate it with Wecashapp. We have many future use cases. If all of Central Africa uses us, there’s a lot of value for nonprofits and the government. We can be the platform where people donate money directly to refugees/lower class and we can partner with the government to improve Central Africa

Built With

• ios
• swift