Buy Ada with M-PESA

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

Build a mobile app that allows users to buy Ada using M-PESA and into a wallet of their choice. M-PESA has 35 million KYC'ed users and will provide an easy way for users to get started with Cardano.

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

Team member 1:

• 7+ year developer
• Emurgo Developer Professional - Ongoing
• Cardano blockchain developer.

Team member 2: (To Recruit)

• 5 years experience in development.
• Experience in blockchain

Team member 3:

• Research and Training Expert
• 30 years experience in project management

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

The proposed solution is to build a mobile app that will allow Kenyans (and later, other citizens of East Africa) to participate in Cardano by being able to buy Ada and use it for product and service payments and also as an investment asset.

The simple mobile application will allow registered users to purchase Ada using MPESA and store it on a wallet of their choice. The app will offer the option to enter an address, at purchase, to have Ada sent to the user’s wallet e.g Yoroi, Nami, Eternl etc. For the new user, the app will offer 'in-app' guides (possibly via a ‘Learn’ page) where the user will be guided on how to set up wallets (Yoroi, Nami, Eternal), how to buy Ada, withdraw to their wallet and how to delegate to a stake pool.

In addition to buying Ada, the app will offer a listing of products and services in which the user can make payments for, in Ada. (This will involve making partnerships with potential business or acting as a reseller for some of the products and services).

The end goal is to enroll new users into cryptocurrency through the Cardano blockchain and have them actively participate in transactions such that they become more accustomed to the idea around crypto and at the same time make the Cardano blockchain the dominant player in Kenyan crypto space.

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

The M-PESA platform in Africa has over 50 million users. Of these 35 million are in Kenya. The platform provides a seamless way to pay for goods and services via mobile money. By providing a way for users to get Ada via the payment service and actively transact with it, the number of Cardano adopters will go up over time.

Suppose in Kenya alone, the app gets traction to just 1% of these users, that means at least 3.5 million users get on-boarded onto Cardano. The net effect of this is much larger over time because once users have the initial experience there will be new use-cases and more solutions that will drive even more adoption in Kenya.

As the application's adoption grows, operations could expand to the other East Africa countries that have M-PESA and this means that even more Africans get on-boarded into financial services built on Cardano.

Over time, general familiarity with Cardano will drive confidence and possibly lead to Ada being among the first crypto currencies recognised at institutional level in Kenya and Africa.

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

• Safaricom, the provider of the M-PESA payment platform may reject the application to connect to its API connection citing on regulatory concerns. However, using past events, this is unlikely because two local crypto startups have recently built crypto services connected to the API.
• With unprecedented user uptake, we may lack of adequate Ada supply volume to meet demand from customers. This will be mitigated by initiating early partnerships with liquidity providers that will be identified.
• Low registration for partner merchants accepting Ada payments. The solution here could be offering incentives to the business in the initial stages to inspire confidence. Once the volumes of transactions pick up, traders will be able to see the profit and naturally, this will lead to other businesses signing up.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

With the defined MVP backlog, the estimate to have an production ready app is 12 months.

This is broken down as:

1. Refined market research specifically on our target groups of users and adoption considerations key for success - 1 month.
2. Define the product vision and product backlog and also define marketing strategy - 2 weeks
3. Refined UI/UX design, user-flows and mock-ups. 1 month
4. Coding/Development (8 Sprints)- 4 months
5. Deploy initial MVP version to a select category of beta testers and iterate building based on feedback. - 1 month
6. Iterative cycles to fix and add features based on feedback and release MVP1 to users - 4 months.
7. Marketing and promotions - 2 months

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Budget Aug 2022 - Aug 2023

Item Amount (USD)

------------------------------------------------------------

Software Developer (2) ---16,000

AWS cloud deployment infrastructure --- 2,000

Research & Training (Marketing/Adoption strategy/User events/Support) --- 5,000

Initial ADA Float Amount --- 5,000

Legal Setup/Advice --- 2,000

Marketing, Events & Publicity --- 3,000

Support staff (2) --- 4,000

Meetings spaces and tools account subscriptions --- 2,000

Contingencies --- 2,000

Total Amount 41, 000

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

Kelly M (Software Developer)

• Overall project management
• Design and development of the mobile application.
• Integration work with M-PESA API

Developer 2: (To Be Recruited)

• Design and development of the mobile application.
• Feature additions and bug fixes during MVP-1 of the product.

Ann Gatende:

• Research and advise on market and adoption strategies.
• Manage efforts in product launch and subsequent user focussed events.
• Lead role in promotion of business partnerships

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

Yes. Once the service is operational and having met the initial set of objectives, the second phase will be to :

1) Expand to immediate East Africa regions of Uganda, DRC and Tanzania to promote more user adoption.

2) Add user initiated buy and sell functionality. This will allow users to both buy and sell ADA resulting in a fully fledged decentralised exchange.

To realise these goals, we will return to seek further round of funding. for expanded operations accross East Africa.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

Development for the app will be sprint based and each sprint will have feature oriented deliverables. The project will use a tool such as Asana and Atlassian Jira to manage overall project management and this board will be open to the community for assessment. The github repository can also be made available for members to access progress on tasks and issues with a view on daily/weekly commits.

For user on-boarding, On boarding campaigns will be carried out with target user groups. This will be managed using Asana (PM tool) such that metrics and on numbers of new users and reports on progress will be track-able and measurable.

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

On successful completion:

• More Kenyans will be able to buy Ada on the platform in a simple and safe manner and use it for payments on products/services or as an investment asset through staking.
• A sizeable number small businesses in select sectors will be accepting Ada(or a Cardano based stable-coin) as a payment option for their products and services.
• By observing the ecosystem created around this platform and other similar ones, government agencies will be more aware of the role of crypto-currency innovation and as a result will eventually pass favourable legistration on the industry.

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

This is a new proposal