SPOTON
It is difficult to locate small businesses in Nigeria due to inadequate office and house numbering systems. Millions of small and micro businesses in rural and sub-urban communities have no formal location-based business identity, a key requirement to access capital and new market opportunities in the formal economy.
This limits businesses’ visibility and opportunity to sell to new customers virtually, receipt payment digitally and build digital financial history for guaranteed access to capital.
SpotOn provides location-based digital identity by mapping geo-coordinates to any 11-digit phone numbers; such that the mobile phone numbers become their address.
With over 180million mobile connections in Nigeria out of a population of 200million+, Spoton ensures more people have access to the digital economy through a safe and private digital identity that allows small businesses to thrive with expanded access to commerce and capital.
SpotOn aims to address the challenge of economic/financial divide by providing an alternative identity system to the informal segment.
This will effectively serve the over 40million micro businesses across Nigeria, especially the rural and suburban segments who have no form of digital footprint which can be leveraged for point-of-presence identity, commerce or verifiable access to capital.
SpotOn expands their business reach through the digital marketplace, which works on their basic featurephones and short-message services (SMS) for easy business transactions, complemented with a phone-based wallet for virtual payment and credit history building.
With this solution, farmers, vulcanizers, street traders, fashion designers and many others can unlock more opportunities in the digital economy through a location-verifiable digital identity that drives commerce, social credibility and verifiable access.
Spoton is a geospatial mobile and web application which maps locations and commercial opportunities at hyperlocal levels.
Every micro-business owner downloads the Android app on their basic featurephones. The application uses SMS to verify the owner’s phone number and then maps this to the coordinate where the business is located. The business owner decides the degree of visibility of the digital identity by pre-validating phone numbers that can access it on the application.
In addition, the commercial credibility of the SpotOn app is reinforced by the on-site verifiers, a network of 6,000 local data agents, who visits each business location to verify the location and the nature of business for accuracy and appropriateness. In addition, these agents help the users to set up a marketplace, manage offers and integrate financial wallet via owner-driven authentication. This effort addresses the digital literacy gap in this segment of the informal economy.
The local business owners can also use basic SMS to manage the application with ease. A dedicated call centre is provided in local languages to address queries.
The platform exposes its API to financial services providers to leverage its credibility data to support loan access decision making.
This digital identity solution is targeted at the low-income informal business owners in rural and suburban locations in Nigeria. The majority of this segment do not have access to bank loans because they are thin-file with no financial history and credible business documentation and traceable business location.
Therefore, many of them have become victims of predatory lenders at shylock interest rates and unbearable terms which have killed many businesses. In addition, the lack of a credit bureau and shared social infrastructure for better loan decisions have limited the growth opportunities of micro-businesses in Nigeria.
While e-commerce is booming for the medium to large scale businesses, the low-income informal businesses are disadvantaged because of lack of digital presence, that is, basic location identity and social credibility.
This solution is a bottom-up approach to address their needs for visibility, credibility building, and commercial traction, while also enabling them to build a financial history for incremental growth capital.
Beyond the opportunity to sell and become findable digitally, the platform digitizes business transaction, social reviews, virtual payments, and digital footfalls.
- Scale safe and private digital identity and financial tools to allow people and small businesses to thrive in the digital economy.
SpotOn is a solution that is carefully designed to upscale and support micro businesses by creating digital identities for them in a way that they can participate in the digital economy with minimal technical know-how.
Our simple approach uses mobile phone on a basic featurephone, which is a common denominator in the informal socio-economic segment of Nigeria. Our technology incorporates the use of spatial data to enable businesses to become locally visible for incremental opportunities that digital economy brings. It is bespoke to scale safe digital identity that allows small businesses to thrive in the digital economy.
- Prototype: A venture or organization building and testing its product, service, or business model.
SpotOn (mobile and web app) is a prototype that is at the stage where all the needed features are added one milestone at a time, and each new added feature tested in-house by the team. It currently exists as a mobile app that is yet to be hosted. We are at this stage where we are testing to be sure it can give us at least 70% of the desired outcome. The remaining 30% we will get after deployment.
Research and Innovation Lead