The Interledger Community 🌱: Maggie

CryptoSavannah — ILP Summit Reflections 2023

Maggie — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 11:37:36 +0000

In the image above from left to right is our group Head of Technology, Noah, CEO CryptoSavannah, Jassy and Myself

Description: Sharing a report as part of my participation/attendance at the ILP Summit 2023.

Introduction

Hi Community, my name Margaret, a technology enthusiast, customer experience expert, contributor in the web3 space and a project manager at CryptoSavannah, a company driving digital transformation in Uganda through digital identity and Know Your Customer (KYC) solutions.

CryptoSavannah envisions a continent where secure identity, transparent transactions, and boundless opportunities converge. We aspire to revolutionize the landscape, fostering a billion-strong community engaged in a seamless, trusted, and rewarding digital economy across Africa.

From the summit, we hoped to get a deeper understanding of Rafiki as an open payments protocol and see projects from different grantees and identify new areas of collaboration to contribute to the Interledger ecosystem.

Key highlights about your participation at the Summit

The first day of the summit was exhilarating as we walked to the registration table to collect our badges/IDs and met for the first time the ILF program team that we had been communicating with for over a year. We met other grantees like GIB, Snake nation, AgnostiPay, Chimoney and engaged in conversations about the improvements on their projects and identified potential areas of collaborations that would benefit the interledger community and ecosystem.

The opportunity to present our project "Binusu Universal Wallet" to other participants was rewarding as we not only saw interest in the work that we are doing or have done but also feedback on the impact of our project to the community.

The discussions and presentations made during the panel and break-out sessions gave me a different perspective on financial inclusion, realizing that the problem of accessibility to financial services is not limited to people living in developing countries but exists in those that are developed as well. The opportunity presented to us to solve this challenge is massive and as contributors to the ecosystem, we need to work together.

During the Digital finance- A woman's immersive experience breakout session, we were challenged to live a day in the life of a woman in a financially illiterate family and community, facing all the tough decisions she is forced to make with the limited resources available. This demonstrated the need and urgency to educate and create awareness first on financial education so that the solutions we build are applicable to these communities.

Key takeaways from the Summit

The steps taken towards making payments as seamless as possible were clearly demonstrated through Rafiki and the newly launched Dassie network under the theme "send a payment as easily as an email."

Project presentations need to be focused and designed around possible use cases so that they are more relatable and instantly understood even by non- tech individuals or groups. The tech language has to be cut as much as possible to increase the chances of project adaptability.

The interactions held at the summit with other participants were enlightening and depicted the passion that each contributor had towards their project addressing a need or problem for a particular audience. Willingness to share and receive feedback was a trait required by every project builder to help them improve their project.

Overall, the summit exceeded my expectations with so much to learn, share and collaborate on. The summit objectives were clearly communicated and achieved, and we had a lot of fun meeting the ILF team, grantees and other participants.

Thank you ILF Team

Binusu Universal Wallet — Progress/Final Grant Report #2

Maggie — Fri, 28 Apr 2023 17:30:08 +0000

Image/Banner (optional)

Project Update

It has been a thrilling six months working on this project, we have learnt how to mitigate unforeseen risk that led to extension of activity timelines. Our biggest win has been completion of the vendor dashboard that is to be installed in supermarkets to run their loyalty programs. In the last few months, we have been working on development and testing usability of the platform on both the vendors and admin interfaces. The tests have been conducted both internally and with a closed user group to review the code and make modifications before deployment.

Progress on Objectives, Key Activities

To achieve financial inclusion, we started with a website version of the dashboard that can be run on a PC and accessed on the lowest internet bandwidth for clients located in areas with poor network coverage. This is to enable vendors benefit from the points redeem and exchange service at any one of their stores, regardless of location. We have designed a mobile application interface for the customer to access the digital wallet on their hand gadgets, this can be via APK or USSD for feature phones. Development work is to commence after completion of installation of the vendor dashboard.
To save costs, we have built the system on a technology that offers effectiveness and cost saving to its users (merchants/vendors and customers). Transactions costs for conversion of points to cash are greatly reduced and transactions are secure, which improves user trust in the system.

Key Activities

On prototype development, we have successfully built and completed the vendor/ merchant dashboard and API which is to be installed in supermarkets. We designed the vendor, user and system admin interfaces and developed the functions to be performed by each of these users on the dashboard. For example, a vendor can create a store, loyalty program and track the number of users per store and its performance. Integration of the system to EFRIS (the National Tax system) for the vendors is still ongoing. Images below are visual representations of the vendor dashboard.

Functional tests were done following the approach of:

a. Unit testing the application during development using pre-defined test scripts.

b. Operational acceptance testing.
c. Final acceptance testing.
The system was tested with data volume workloads to determine overall performance in terms of throughput, response time, run time and resource utilization.
A repository of the dashboard back and front ends can be accessed via these links.
https://github.com/CryptoSavannah/UniversalWalletBackEnd
https://github.com/CryptoSavannah/LoyaltyFrontEnd

Project Impact & Target Audience(s)

Our Total Addressable market is two million Ugandans in the middle-income group, earning an average monthly salary of $270 and consume products using loyalty points. Women and mothers make up the biggest percentage of customers that shop at supermarkets and retail stores and are actively involved in financial decisions. They borrow, save, send, and receive money. Through the Binusu universal wallet, they will have access to financial services that will enable them to save and reduce on expenditures. This solution introduces interoperability where the customer can exchange points awarded from one vendor for access to services or products of another vendor, who is within the universal wallet ecosystem.

Through the agent model, we hope to increase access to our financial solutions to the greater population, hence creating value to the ordinary citizens across the country.

Communications and Marketing

!We made a brief introduction of the universal wallet work we are doing with the Interledger Foundation. We had not yet reached the marketing stage of the project as we were majorly focusing on research and prototype development.
https://twitter.com/CryptoSavannah/status/1580486638639386630?s=20&t=bUNJCPmJSjrpzkbib4IOoA

What’s Next?

Our next step is to Launch the MVP of the loyalty program dashboard to vendors, do a training of trainers, an M&E analysis to modify and refine the MVP and also complete development of the mobile application.

Community Support

We need assistance referrals to used or tested loyalty programs to help us refine both the dashboard and mobile application.

Additional Comments

We build and deliver digital identity and KYC solutions to improve data harmonization and immutability across related entities that offer services accessed by almost the same users. This is what we aim to achieve with this project.

Relevant Links/Resources (optional)

Binusu Universal Wallet — Grant Report #1

Maggie — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 20:10:28 +0000

Project Update

We have been working on milestone 3- Design; working on development of the functional specifications for the both the mobile and browser application interfaces. We identified and categorized software development and service level requirements into four priorities i.e. mandatory, desirable, standard and customization required, which were matched with the conducted needs assessment. Our next milestone is to develop the code for the prototype to check if it fits in the designed specifications.

Progress on objectives

On financial inclusion, we conducted research and involved the retail supermarkets who are stakeholders to design an application that is user friendly, easy to understand and compatible to their current vendor/sales management system, so that the awarded points on sales captured can easily be converted to crypto or fiat and used to make more purchases. The vendor's customers should also be able to use the accumulated points on their wallets to pay for and access services from other retailers like airtime or data from their telecom operator and utility payments to utility service providers.
On cost saving, the wallet which is built on blockchain will be integrated to Binusu Merchant services, an internal crypto exchange backend to reduce on costs incurred in conversion and transfer of the two currencies. BMS will store the money on points awarded in a native stable coin Binusu, to allow faster and seamless transfer of value. Both the vendor and customer will benefit from minimized loss on money incurred in transaction processing and payment.

Key activities

A work plan with milestone, activities to be undertaken and their duration for each milestone was developed, discussed and with their entire team. It is updated every week to indicate which activities have been accomplished and their percentage of completion.

Scoping was the first milestone in which we had to define and secure core resources that is human resources, tools to be used and finances. A needs analysis was conducted that involved interviews with target customers and bench marking with existing application developer companies that have designed a similar project. Here we had to check that what the research work and activities for the entire project were within the budget of the ILF Grant.
From the system requirements milestone, a software specifications document was collectively populated with data with the senior developer taking lead on architecture and network infrastructure designs for the application. It was saved in a Team channel which is the central place for the entire team to have visibility, share and get updates on the project.
Next we moved to the design milestone in which we determined the system delivery mechanism to be used and we decided to split the developer workload basing on the number and nature of functionalities that have to be developed for the prototype. One developer was assigned the browser/ web application for the vendor (retailer or business) and the other two were assigned to the mobile application that is to be accessed on the customers mobile device. The application has to be compatible to both IOS and android systems.

Communications and marketing

We shared about the ILF award received on our Twitter and Linkedin accounts, briefly introducing the universal wallet project were undertaking and the benefits it will bring to its users and community. We also had staff share about the award and project on their personal accounts to keep the public informed and expectant about the final release.
https://twitter.com/CryptoSavannah/status/1580486638639386630?s=20&t=bUNJCPmJSjrpzkbib4IOoA

We have also discussed app branding to change the name of the wallet and any other branding collateral. Our internal branding team is currently working on this

What’s next?

We still have the development, training and deployment milestones in which we are going to concentrate on develop the prototype basing on the written code, conduct internal and User Acceptance tests, train vendor teams on how to navigate the software/ application then finally plan for launch activities to the market. We shall also be provided an update in the next progress report indicating what we have been able to accomplish in this time frame, challenges and the possibility of adding digital identity to the wallet

What community support would benefit your project?

From the community, we would like to know if there is anyone who has worked on or knows a company running a similar project. We would to like to do as much benchmarking as we can, learn from their challenges and how to mitigate risk

Additional comments

Our company is a member of the Blockchain Association of Uganda and through this membership we are informed of the blockchain use cases and collaborations in the country that we can leverage to find resources in-terms of developers, consultants and partnerships

Relevant links/resources (optional)

Progress report #1

Maggie — Wed, 14 Dec 2022 11:43:37 +0000

Project Introduction
Hello Community, This is to introduce the Universal wallet project that we are building as CryptoSavannah with the support of the financial service grant from Interledger Foundation. The solution we are working on is to addresses the problems of existing loyalty and rewards programs, which will also be an entry point to identity and crypto payment adoption.
Several business including airlines, retail shopping, fuel and hospitality operate loyalty and rewards programs which are plagued with delays from the long Turn Around Times, inefficiency as users hold multiple cards from different vendors and inadequate as points are not easily transferable from one vendor to another.
Our aim is to provide single digital wallet first in Uganda, a simple mobile application on a phone where rewards from loyalty programs are captured and easily managed and this will be integrated to the Vendors’ sales management system. The App will bring coherent benefits of;
• Convenience where points will be redeemed through scanning
• Visibility – users will have all their different reward programs under one view
• Transferability - of points across vendors and therefore the ability to redeem points at a different merchant within the network

Milestone progress
From the scope of the project we will need design, development and project management resources. CryptoSavannah has all these resources in house and have already been deployed in the project. We have done a market review and reached out to a number of businesses in Uganda that are ready to work with us on a PoC. We have engaged the retail supervisors and managers to understand their existing loyalty program and the needs of both the vendor and the customers. To address these needs we have mapped out User Interface flows for both the mobile app and dashboard to be accessed by the vendor. These have been included in a system requirement specifications document to provide direction as we build and refine a prototype.

Next step
In the next month, we are to start review the system specifications following the needs assessment done and start on design of the system function specifications