2Chap

Imagine Megan, a software engineer in Europe who wants to send money to her mother in a village in Kenya, who does not have a bank account. Most of Megan's options are very limited, expensive, time consuming and will generally require her mother to go to the nearest financial institution which can represent a long commute.

Suppose her mother, like it is the case for most people in Africa, has a mobile money account which is a technology that allows you to store money on your phone, receive/make local transfers. Our solution offers Megan a cheaper and faster option to transfer money straight to her mother's mobile money account.

2Chap allows you to withdraw funds to your bank account, mobile money account or in cash. We aim to provide an ecosystem of financial tools (loans, international/local transfers, etc.) to people without bank accounts therefore including them in the digital economy.

We need banks for three main reasons: to receive money, pay for goods and services and to take loans, save and invest money. The majority of people in developing countries do not have access to bank accounts and live in a cash-based economy which makes these services risky for them as well as time consuming.

During the last 10 years these challenges of living in a cash-based economy have been almost non-existing, not because people suddenly started having bank accounts but because of a technology which stores monetary value on their mobile phone smart or not. 

In most countries in sub-Saharan Africa, for instance mobile phones are more common than access to electricity and because phones are widespread in those countries, people use them as their bank accounts. The only problem is, they are not completely like bank accounts, they don't allow you to receive/make international transfers, make online payments, take loans or invest money. 

A bank does much more than store monetary value, it provides access to a whole ecosystem of financial tools for investment, loans, international/local money transfers. 

2Chap aims at providing that ecosystem for people with mobile money accounts starting with enabling them to receive/make international transfers.

Our solution is to use technology to simplify already existing proceedings that people without bank accounts are sometimes able to resort to in order to receive/make an international transfer, take a loan, etc.

How do we facilitate an international transfer for instance ?

Imagine a liquidity pool where people are constantly exchanging one asset for another. Take Megan who has money on her 2Chap account from which she wants to send $500 to her mother in Kenya; she wants her mother to receive the equivalent in kenyan shillings(53900). Our system consults the liquidity pool in Kenya, finds Ben who's willing to exchange kenyan shillings for 2Chap assets worth $500. Ben sends the 53900shillings to Megan's mother and receives $500's worth of 2Chap assets.

2Chap assets can be stable crypto-coins or money in a bank account. We use bank accounts to facilitate operations in countries where we do have bank accounts and for those where we do not, we use a stable crypto-coin. In the case we use a crypto-coin as our asset, we can use any crypto exchange as our liquidity pool. When there's enough transactions going on in a country, fiat money from those transactions is used as asset.

We are working to include the unbanked into the global economy and enable them to receive or make international transfers, shop online, have access to loans, etc. 

This will allow them to be able to do all sorts of things like work and get paid online and will give them the ability to drastically improve their lives. When you look at a map of the world displaying innovations happening in the world, the areas where there are less innovations are those with the biggest number of underserved and unbanked people. Having access to adequate financial tools is a huge enabler of innovation, economic growth and emotional well-being.

Most people believe that the path to development for developing countries should be the same as that of the already developed countries but what if it is not? 

Efforts to understand the needs of the unbanked people in the developing countries have led us to believe that they do not necessarily need more banks outlets to open in their country, finding a way for their mobile money account to provide them access to the same services a bank account would provide, will be more than enough. This is because people need banking, not banks.

Our solution aligns with the challenge of digital inclusion in the fact that it enables the inclusion of everyone in the digital economy, it provides low-income, remote and rural communities with access to a digital infrastructure.

Because our solution allows you to also scale the services of your mobile money account by receiving or making international transfers, it also aligns with the challenge of scaling safe and private digital identity and financial tools to allow people and small businesses to thrive in the digital economy.

Some aspects of the solution have been fully tested and working. For instance using our bank accounts in Ghana and Togo to facilitate international transfers between both countries for people without bank accounts is fully operational and working.

Other aspects are still being tested like using stable crypto-coins as our assets or using a crypto exchange as our liquidity pool.

Our solution uses already existing technologies in a new way, to make it possible for people with or without bank accounts to receive or make international transfers. This new approach to the problem of international money transfer is innovative in the fact that it does not require the creation of new infrastructures, new bank outlets or for everybody to open a bank account.

Because of that, it provides a much more feasible and a much less expensive alternative to that of creating a bank account for everybody which is in fact either infeasible or not economically viable for banks.

Our solution builds on already existing technologies like mobile money for instance, by adding on top of them a new layer which is that of international transfers and hopefully soon, loans and investments.

Like previously stated, people need banking, not banks and creating an ecosystem of financial tools accessible to everyone including those without a bank account will enable everyone to bank even without a bank account. 2Chap's goal is to create that ecosystem starting with transfers.

We are currently serving 10 people with 2 of them being companies, the other 8 are people without bank accounts that regularly receive transfers from family members in the neighbor country (Togo, Ghana).

In one year, we expect that number to grow to 5000 through targeted marketing.

In five years, we expect to be a fully matured platform making millions of transfers per day.

Our progress is measured by these metrics:

• Number of transactions per day on the platform
• Number of transactions for the unbanked
• Number of transactions per country per day
• Number of litigations per transaction
• Average time of transaction
• Average cost of transaction
• Average gain per transaction (for those that go through the liquidity-pool)

5 full-time staff

Our team is comprised of a diverse and complementary group of experts in computer science and finance. Most members of our team have worked for a few years in the financial sector either as application developers or as accountants. That kind of experience is invaluable in understanding the kind of technologies that are currently lacking in the payment sector in most countries of sub-Saharan Africa.

 All of us in the team have spent years in sub-Saharan Africa and at some point of our lives, when younger, we were also unbanked so we understand the limitations that come with being unbanked and know the main points of concerns to focus on. 

We also know how much is too much when it comes to commissions on a transaction or processing times of transactions.

As black founders, we believe in the value that comes with diversity and the fact of having our staff be representative of our target population.

Our current goal for diversity is to have a 50% split between our male and female employees. We currently have 2 women in our team of 5.

When we start covering more countries, we will set more diversity targets so as to keep our staff representative of our customer population.

We are looking to get more visibility and find better ways to get in front of our customers. We are in need of investment and believe Solve will help us get into the right network of investors.

We need good marketing strategies to be able to get more users onto our platform but we are also, like any financial entity, required to be legally compliant. We do not currently have any lawyer on our team to help us on those matters. 

We also need to get investors, so some support on how to pitch to investors will be more than welcomed.

• Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
• MIT Bootcamps
• We are open to meet with interested Solve Members that you might recommend.

It can be hard for refugees to open a bank account or to get a loan. Our solution provides them with a platform where operations such as receiving, sending, saving or withdrawing money are made available to anyone. 

Our platform will also very soon give users the ability to borrow money or invest in the stock market.

The Andan Prize will be used to provide small loans to refugees.

A lot of people around the world are not able to access certain basic financial services like receiving international transfers, accessing loans, etc. 2Chap provides them with a platform where operations such as receiving, sending, saving or withdrawing money are made available to anyone. 

Our platform will also very soon give users the ability to borrow money or invest in the stock market.

The HP Prize will be used to provide small loans to users of the platform.

Out of the nearly 2 billion people that are unbanked across the world, more than half are women. Our solution for the unbanked is also one for women that are unbanked. Using our platforms will allow all women across the world that do not have a bank account to still bank and have access to essential financial services. Using data on phone activity and user's activities on our platform, we are able to compute each user's credit score.

This prize will make it possible for us to be able to grant loans to women based on the previously mentioned credit score.

AI is essentially used to compute a user's credit score using data related to that user's phone activities and activities on his/her 2Chap account. That technology has been proven by companies such as M-Pesa in Kenya and multiple research papers to be efficient in computing users' credit scores.

We do not currently grant loans and only process international/local transfers for people without bank accounts.

The AI for Humanity Prize will be hugely helpful in enabling us to start granting loans. It will also help us scale our currently activities to more countries. 

We provide international money transfer solutions to people without bank accounts and we do so by converting each international transfer operation into two local transfer operations. Our local transfer operations are made possible by liquidity-pools which are marketplaces where assets are exchanged. Sometimes, the assets being exchanged are crypto-currencies. Basically we leverage crypto-exchanges to process some of our transactions when said transaction is taken place in a country where we do not have a bank account.