If you have ever been involved in a sort of corporative and I mean on informal levels where a group of friends or colleagues come together to contribute to a fund with one person collecting at the end of each month. So say me and eleven other people come together with the aim of making monthly contributions of 50,000 Naira/$200 monthly that would amount to 600,000 Naira /$2,400 monthly. What usually happens is this, one person takes the entire 600,000 Naira while replenishing the purse with their monthly commitment of 50,000 Naira so that another person is able to collect in the following month. This goes on for the rest of the year until we have collected equal amounts and what this does is that it helps people plan for the rainy day like rent, down payment on a car, vacation among others.
But what if you want to achieve the same thing without only this time using technology? That’s where this startup comes in.
Called REACH and founded by JR Kanu who holds an MBA from Stanford University, the app helps you set records and meet them by telling you how much needs to be deducted each time you set a goal for yourself. In an interview with Mfonobong Nsehe at Forbes, Mr. Kanu gave an example where he said, Say five of us are planning to visit Dakar in six months. I know this trip will cost each of us ₦100,000. I download the app. Create a savings goal called “Dakar 2017″ with ₦100,000 as my target amount. I invite my four friends to “Dakar 2017″. REACH will debit us weekly until we’ve saved up our target amount. That’s how REACH works.
On the business side, they connect REACH users to items they’ve been saving for and in the end businesses are expect to pay a fee to them for facilitating this. “If one of our customers finds herself short of a savings target and needs a small loan to bridge the expense, we can connect her to banks and other lenders for a fee that the bank/lender pays. The service is always free to our customers with the businesses paying us the finder’s fee.”
Mr. Kanu who worked with ecommerce giant Konga was instrumental to setting up Konga Pay to make it easier for Konga users to make payments online.
With respect to how he plans to compete with banks who may have similar ideas through their SME (small and medium enterprises) platforms, he said he’s been happy so far with the corporations of some big names in the industry. “They’ve been amazing in giving us the rails on which to build our product. There are other banking partnerships in the works for us. Then take a look at Access Bank with their support for Paystack, Flutterwave, and PayWithCapture. “
The app is currently in Beta (test phase) and will be available to the public byt eh end of October.
Paul Balo is the founder of TechBooky and a highly skilled wireless communications professional with a strong background in cloud computing, offering extensive experience in designing, implementing, and managing wireless communication systems.
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Say five of us are planning to visit Dakar in six months. I know this trip will cost each of us ₦100,000. I download the app. Create a savings goal called “Dakar 2017″ with ₦100,000 as my target amount. I invite my four friends to “Dakar 2017″. REACH will debit us weekly until we’ve saved up our target amount. That’s how REACH works.
