The journey of my career starts here

As the name implies UNBANKK is birthed from the word unbanked which simply means not having a bank account. Though the app is still in it's beta stage would love to build a career and brand before it's launch. I would appreciate constructive criticism towards my idea to help fine tune it to best meet people's expectations

Let me formally introduce UNBANKK. It is going to be an all in one digital financial service for the unbanked i.e our families, friends and loved ones that are unbanked can do some limited financial transactions before they can become banked. I want everyone to journey with me in this great adventure because I won't be telling how but would be showing problem we could solve together using UNBANKK

Scenerio 1:
At some point in everyone's life we become cash trap and need a quick personal loan. With the popularity of lending apps these days you think I could borrow some money and pay later but after trying so many you found out that they all ask for a peculiar basic requirement you don't have which is BVN.... Now you are force to get other alternatives but what if you could get that little funds without the need of the BVN though it looks risky but it's also doable. One of the various problem UNBANKK would solve

Banking the Underbanked: Formal vs Informal Financial Inclusion, Does It Matter?
The financial inclusion discourse revolves around three customer segments: the banked, the unbanked and the underbanked.

The banked refers to consumers with bank accounts or digital wallets in deposit money (or microfinance) banks and mobile money operators, respectively. The unbanked are consumers, without a bank account or digital wallet, who conduct all their financial transactions independently. The underbanked segment, which is the focus of this article, refers to financial service consumers who use informal and unregulated financial services provided by savings groups (like the Alajos and Esusu) and cooperatives. It could also refer to consumers who may have a bank account to their name, but rarely if ever, use it and opt to empty their accounts once they receive any funds in them.

The Enhancing Financial Innovation and Access (EFinA) 2018 Access to Finance Survey pegs the number of these underbanked adults at about 14.6 million, a population considered as low hanging fruits for financial inclusion efforts.

How? Firstly, nearly all consumers in the underbanked segment are already banked by proxy. Every time they opt to save with a local savings group or cooperative, their funds eventually end up within the formal financial service ecosystem, usually via the cooperative’s bank account.

Secondly, banks have been known to develop and deploy solutions which help their customers do business better within different industries — education, engineering, oil and gas, etc; as well as bring in more deposits. However, we are yet to witness key solutions, specifically targeting the informal financial service industry.

This is a big opportunity for both formal and informal providers and it creates exciting possibilities for financial inclusion. The informal financial service sector is a 14.6 million customer market currently being served by diverse and unregulated financial service providers. We have informal savings clubs and cooperatives who have carved out a niche for themselves, targeting select groups and individuals. There are also the rotating savings clubs that are near-ubiquitous among Nigerian market traders, then, the local creditors and loan sharks.

For several reasons, these informal providers are attractive to a lot of people, especially people who operate majorly within the informal economy (which is estimated to constitute about 60 percent of the entire Nigerian economy according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF)). These informal providers would be a lucrative vertical for the formal financial service sector because they have already done a lot of the heavy lifting of financial inclusion. They have the networks, the market knowledge, the customer base and a system that works. Through collaboration and partnerships, formal providers can leverage these strengths and resources towards a common goal.

There’s a school of thought that says banking will change through collaboration and not just the disruptive power of fintechs and we agree with this, especially as it concerns the underbanked. Collaboration would be a more optimal needle-moving strategy. The evolution of Nigeria’s financial service industry rests on how fast or how soon the two ecosystems — the formal and informal — can foster collaborative relationships.



What collaborative measures would you recommend for Nigeria’s formal and informal financial service providers?

UNBANKK is going to be that intermediate between the unbanked, underbanked and banked consumers to different financial institution bridging the Gap and also encouraging the financial excluded to become included in ways that is most familiar to them

Scenerio 2:
You are a business person and have a daily income flow but whenever a new thrift collector comes around you join in their venture and get disappointed after a while because of most would disappear with your daily savings. What if all these can be avoided with just a smartphone and the closest mobile banking vendor/kiosk..... Think about it and it's just one of the problems UNBANKK will solve

A survey shows that financial exclusion rate is highest in the rural part of Nigeria due to lack of access to a physical point of financial service. To access a basic financial service, some Nigerians, especially those in the rural communities travel for hours to access a service point at the nearest town.

In recent times there has been a rapid growth in agent networks targeted at providing financial service and we would be leveraging on these networks to ensure that the rural dwellers are also being involved in our services

UNBANKK.... Getting the unbanked involved

Scenerio 3:
As a group of 10 friends living in different states in Nigeria you all want to save for a collective purpose e.g your Christmas reunion and each person is to pay a lump some of money at the end of November. You could all decide to save weekly or monthly putting aside a particular amount to ensure that by the end of the circle you get to reach that particular goal. Good for you all because with a few clicks on your phone it is totally set up and the final some would only be disbursed only when the target is met.


UNBANKK would ensure your reunion is lit even when you all are not living in the same city

The banked and underbanked consumers are not left out as our services is more beneficial to them but tailored to the unbanked. The average Nigerian is truly underbanked because most have a bank account but only use them occasionally i.e to receive funds and empty it or their financial institution is way beyond reach.

To encourage them we have provided channels that can be assessed by them without defeating our aim and service.

If you are banked or underbanked and not very comfortable revealing your bank details (BVN or Card details) and wanting to explore our options.

UNBANKK got you covered..... Now you are free to explore with us

Scenerio 4:
A set of friends chooses to do a monthly contribution of 100,000 to be rotated amongst themselves mapping each member to a particular month. This is to help in raising bulk funds at particular allotted month for each person.

Collection becomes an issue when discussed amongst themselves because some doesn't have a bank account but does trading for a living and others are employee dependent on salary

What if that is not an issue with UNBANKK. ensuring collection, debiting if need be and balancing their books before disbursing to each allotted member

UNBANKK ..... Getting everyone involved

How Alternative Credit Scoring Can Work for the Unbanked…and the Bottom Line
Credit scoring is critical to modern finance, and we can put it to work -- profitably -- to support the underserved.



The essence of the financial industry is symbiotic relationships, where all participants have a winning angle, depositors get interest on their funds, project owners get funding, and the middleman gets a cut. If financial institutions fail to offer an incentive for one of the parties, the whole system would stop working, this is why financial inclusion must serve the bottom line, because that insures the presence of an inclusive ecosystem of professionals who can work to build out services for the underserved.

Questions such as “What’s in it for the unbanked?” and “How do I make everyone benefit?” have been challenging the world of finance and financial inclusion. When it comes to the low-income segment, banks are the ones who could not find the right angle. A staggering 1.7 billion adults are estimated to be unbanked worldwide. With modest funds and no credit history, they are expensive to serve in the conventional banking channels and are often thought to have low potential to create value.

When we approached the issue, we considered three main areas of potential service offerings: payments, deposits and lending. Despite the potential for payments to integrate more people in the financial system – and still be profitable for the institutions and convenient for the customers – there was high competition in that area and financial institutions have little chance to differentiate between the services they offer compared to each other. Deposits couldn’t present a stable revenue stream, so offering credit became the best possible solution. Credit scoring is crucial for this.

Credit Scoring: A Birds-Eye View
Credit scoring plays a vital role in economic growth by helping expand access to credit markets, lowering the price of credit and reducing delinquencies and defaults. In the US and Europe, credit scoring helps drive the economy and makes credit affordable.

For consumers, credit scoring is the key to home ownership and consumer credit. It increases competition among lenders which drives down prices. Decisions can be made faster and cheaper, more consumers can be approved, and risk is spread more fairly so vital resources — such as insurance and mortgages — are priced more fairly.

For businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, credit-scoring increases access to financial resources, reduces costs and helps manage risk.
For the national economy, credit scoring helps smooth consumption during cyclical periods of unemployment and reduces the swings of the business cycle. By enabling loans and credit products to be bundled according to risk and sold as securitized derivatives, credit scoring connects consumers to secondary capital markets and increases the amount of capital that is available to be extended or invested in economic growth.

From Thin to Thick Credit Files: Where Data Can Help With Viability
As beneficial as credit scoring is to the economy writ large, banks had to find a different way to assess the credit worthiness of the underserved.

That is where data can play a major role. Alternative credit scoring and predictive models are a solution that would make credit lines for unbanked faster, cheaper, and credit worthy. While the traditional and most common way to evaluate the creditworthiness of individuals is their credit history, this is simply not available for unbanked people. They rely on cash and don’t have any traceable financial history; they have thin credit files in a banking industry that prefers thick ones. Therefore, we turn to different behavioral attributes that would allow us to create credit scoring. This system relies on factors that are available for everyone and are easily traceable. The data comes from social media, smart phone data such as contact lists, or GPS data, and monthly utility bills. In time, this approach will turn these clients from thin to thick files and they become regular bank clients.

Alternative credit scoring and predictive models make credit lines for unbanked faster, cheaper, and credit worthy.

Through machine learning, credit organizations can create predictive models based on these attributes. They can establish a credit score that has proven to be very reliable and has the potential to forecast the amounts a person could borrow and the possibility of repayment. This methodology provides people with a much-coveted service in a timely manner and allows the organizations to be profitable without having to deal with a lot of extra risk.

For example, working with a ride hailing service providers, CIB conducted a pilot to create an alternative credit scoring for drivers based on their behaviors, their ratings, and the comments customers leave. The new methodology enabled us to integrate a segment – one that did not have access to financial services – and, in turn, they had lower default rates than any other sub-segment in the current portfolio.

Creating this beneficial relationship between institutions and unbanked segments gives profit incentives for both parties. However, several hurdles remain to complete the cycle, including onboarding a large number of people despite regulatory constraints. The majority of financial institutions have reached the conclusion that the best way to serve unbanked segments is through digital channels that would funnel into traditional channels, but we have to keep in mind that onboarding these clients would still require a lot of work in terms of marketing, reach, and maintaining a complaint process. These are issues that banking and governments are still working on.

We have been talking more on saving and have not highlighted anything on our withdrawal methods and options

All savings with us are digitize to our mobile wallet where money can be transferred to banks and pay various bills.

These transfers are instant to aid those that would want to withdraw from a mobile banking agent or vendor thus confirming the transfer before paying.

If for any reason you are not comfortable with that option then we would provide you with ATM cards that will be linked to the wallet which is acceptable Nationwide by online merchant,POS vendors and ATM machine.

Now your money goes wherever you go...... UNBANKK

In Nigeria, cash still dominates retail payments, but digital transactions, especially mobile payment are growing strongly.
A significant share of Nigerian population remains either unbanked or underbanked. Nigerian citizens often neglect banking and prefer storing cash or use local solutions for making transactions such as community banking.

The Central Bank of Nigeria has targeted financial inclusion with the help of SANEF, a network of 500,000 agents. By extending the core financial services, the bank aims to achieve a minimum of 80 percent financial admittance by 2020.

This is the year 2020 and much of financial inclusion is still a mirage. It's so sad that for Nigerians cash is too convenient to carry about and maybe that financial inclusion would be in a distance future.

UNBANKK to do much more for everyone

Scenerio 5:
My grandmother is a petty trader and sells sweets and gets paid by children for goods in coins now she has about 50,000 naira worth of coins that's going to be a heavy load to carry to the market. she goes to the closest bank to pay in preventing carrying such load.

She has now ease herself of the pain but in present day Nigeria she wraps it with a rope and place it in her bra. She is not pressured going cashless because it's still convenient for her.

What if she misplaces the money or it was stolen from her. She could have saved it in a digital wallet to save her the pain .

UNBANKK your go to digital wallet

What is the English word for Ajo,Esusu or Adashe amongst a of persons as you rightly know it...... I bet most people don't know.

A prepaid debit card is much like a gift card in that you are accessing stored value on a card. It is pre-loaded with a certain amount of cash, which can be used the same way that a credit card is used. The payment is immediately deducted from the balance. Once the balance is used up, the card can be reloaded with cash online or through certain convenience stores or other participating physical location depending on the card.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
A prepaid debit card is an alternative to cash, and has a balance that is paid in advance.
It can be an alternative to a credit card for consumers with a poor credit history or no credit history.


This type of card is issued by banks and branded by the major credit card companies, including Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express. No credit check is done before issuing a prepaid debit card.

Understanding Prepaid Debit Cards
A prepaid debit card is, in effect, cash. It is a useful substitute for paper cash in some instances:

A consumer with a bad credit rating or a young person with no credit history can use a prepaid debit card to build responsible spending habits over time.
It is a safe way to carry money around. Prepaid cards have theft protection, as do credit cards.
It can be used for online purchases and routine payments as easily as in a store.
It can be gifted as an alternative to cash.
Anyone who wants to stick to a strict budget could consider using a prepaid debit card.

A youthful population, increasing smartphone penetration, and a focused regulatory drive to increase financial inclusion and cashless payments, are combining to create the perfect recipe for a thriving fintech sector.

UNBANKK...... thriving with the norm

An untapped market: The unbanked shopper......do you know that billions of people do not have access to a bank account, either due to the lack of income, unstable financial markets or the lack of verifiable identification. At the same time, millions of these same people operate in major consumer markets and wants to shop for food, apparel, household goods and gifts online.

Let us make that dream come true for you..... UNBANKK

Getting ready to launch

Hello, Can I join your team?

Hello,
Can I join your team?

Yes you can but after the launch. we are yet to see if we would need more hands and idea to push it mainstream.

Would definitely contact you if the need arises..... Thanks we really appreciate your gesture

hello,
hoping to read from you.

Tufifteen:
Hello,
Can I join your team?

Yes you can but after the launch. we are yet to see if we would need more hands and idea to push it mainstream.

Would definitely contact you if the need arises..... Thanks we really appreciate your gesture

NigAmbassador:
hello,
hoping to read from you.

thanks

60 million Nigerians are unbanked it is time to get them involved.14 million are underbanked it is time to give them something different.26 million are truly banked it is time to create a new adventure for them.


UNBANKK beyond the boundaries of banking

The idea behind this app was gotten because we have finally found a way to solve the very problem that has always hindered the unbanked to participate in any online financial transaction be it savings,loans or commercial store which is the card details and verification.... To this effect most people are unaware that the solution lies within a product the bank offers for such.... With the aid of the banks we are going to empower the unbanked to get involved.

In Nigeria the banks believe that you have to be banked to assess their products that is why the unbanked are still enormous. This has birthed the new alternative banking such as fintech and mobile banking agent.

There is so much to fill in this ecosystem and space.we would only do our best to solve a little few


UNBANKK balancing the odds for everyone

Do you have a landing page yet?

Roadyroadie:
Do you have a landing page yet?

not yet...... just doing a pre launch campaign. We are trying to get the word out about our app and the problem we could all solve together using the app

Tufifteen:
A prepaid debit card is much like a gift card in that you are accessing stored value on a card. It is pre-loaded with a certain amount of cash, which can be used the same way that a credit card is used. The payment is immediately deducted from the balance. Once the balance is used up, the card can be reloaded with cash online or through certain convenience stores or other participating physical location depending on the card.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
A prepaid debit card is an alternative to cash, and has a balance that is paid in advance.
It can be an alternative to a credit card for consumers with a poor credit history or no credit history.


This type of card is issued by banks and branded by the major credit card companies, including Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express. No credit check is done before issuing a prepaid debit card.

Understanding Prepaid Debit Cards
A prepaid debit card is, in effect, cash. It is a useful substitute for paper cash in some instances:

A consumer with a bad credit rating or a young person with no credit history can use a prepaid debit card to build responsible spending habits over time.
It is a safe way to carry money around. Prepaid cards have theft protection, as do credit cards.
It can be used for online purchases and routine payments as easily as in a store.
It can be gifted as an alternative to cash.
Anyone who wants to stick to a strict budget could consider using a prepaid debit card.

If the prepaid card is available to everyone outside the credit history of the banks then why is it not so popular that is where the major problem the bank have so far because a country like Nigeria our economy is cash dependent and the bank is yet to find a solution to digitize that cash for everyone doing cash transactions

The banks need to provide convenient ways to carry money which is way better than cash else we would still be cash dependent. Fintech seems to be getting it right but are only concerned about the banked customers leaving the unbanked to their fate right now.

Tufifteen:
not yet...... just doing a pre launch campaign. We are trying to get the word out about our app and the problem we could all solve together using the app

Great! Looking forward to your moves

Roadyroadie:

Great! Looking forward to your moves

thanks promise not to disappoint in solving those problems

It is astonishing to note that the unbanked are unwilling to become banked because of their fore knowledge of the banks. Most of them believe that the bank is a store house for the elite and upper class because they have alot to spare after their monthly expenses while most of them on the other hand live each day as it comes,turning over their income to generate profit on a daily basis to take care of their daily needs. These daily profit has been sustainable by them over time though meagre but consistent enough to save a little from it but because of their fore knowledge of the banks they are not comfortable saving their meagre funds in the banks but rather patronize thrift collector or cooperatives. The banks on the other hand don't care about them even when they pretend to care with their financial inclusion intiative they would rather bank with a single dangote than a million market trader.

The GAP won't close anytime soon because each party seems to be comfortable in their dealings and transactions

UNBANKK would bridge that gap

In present day, All financial institution be it banks, fintech startup and others are highly dependent on cash digitization. A process that allows individuals to convert cash into digital form as in bank account,mobile wallet etc.This process has have it's bottle neck worldwide as the enablers in most cases are not the financial institution but middlemen merchant making it expensive to actually digitize cash though nobody seems to be talking about it.

Case study in Nigeria.........

The banks
If you were to digitize your money via the banks then you have to go to the bank to make a direct deposit, cheap and free but not easily accessible as banks only accept money from only their account holders but if you feel you still need to use a 3rd party bank for deposit then you request for a fund transfer as this point that bank acts as a middleman merchant with a fee attached.

Mobile banking agent
This is one of the most popular middle men merchant in Nigeria. A visit to them make a direct deposit and be charged a transaction fee.

It is only when cash has been digitalize it becomes convenient for everyone the banks,fintech and their customers. All this is only possible because that individual have a bank account.

Now the question arises? Even at that expense why can't the unbanked enjoy that privileged to carry digital cash and it's convenience.