Eversend

Idea

Introduction

For Africans and Africans in the diaspora that experience inconvenient and expensive financial services, Eversend is a hub for financial services allowing them to save, exchange, and send money at the best possible rates, both online and offline.

The Problem

Financial services in Africa are disintegrated, expensive, and inconvenient. The continent's insurance penetration is less than 3%, 7% has access to credit, and people can pay over 32% for a cross-border money transfer. We think the root of this problem is that 66% of people in Africa do not have a bank account.

Our Solution

A digital-only finance platform providing cross-border money transfers, multi-currency wallets, currency exchange and aspirations to offer personal loans, savings, group savings, merchant payments and investments in the future. Available on Android and iOS. Coming soon on USSD (so users can access without the Internet, anywhere they have a cell phone signal).

Intended impact

We wanted to solve the most painful problem that Africans face in financial services. A problem that the whole continent needed an innovative solution for so badly. We figured out that this was: cross border money transfer.

Why? As of 2018, there was over $47 billion in money transfers received in Sub Saharan Africa each year. Of this, over $26 billion is coming from the rest of the world, where the market is already dominated by players like TransferWise, Wave and WorldRemit.

We choose to focus on intra-Africa money transfers, where the remaining $21 billion is transferred, as well as money transfers from Sub Saharan Africa to the rest of the world, totalling $14.2 billion annually. For this market there is, as far as we're aware, no digital solution. It is still dominated by Western Union and MoneyGram. This means fees potentially exceeding 30%, a bus ride to the nearest city, and waiting in line. Eversend integrates with mobile money platforms and costs 2.5-4%.

After this initial focus on money transfers, we start building out the rest of the features.

Substantial accomplishments to date

- We launched in March 2019 and have $1.4m in gross transaction volumes.

- Monthly organic growth often reach over 30%.

- Our planned CAC for a transacting user is $8.80 and our LTV is $170.

- We received investment from Atomico, Techstars, and Fast Track Capital.

- We were named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 List for Europe, Technology.

- We won one of the biggest startup competitions in the world, Slush.

- Accelerated by Techstars, Station F, Nasdaq, Fast Track Malmo and Google Launchpad.

- Stone was named one of Institut Choiseful’s Top 100 Economic Leaders of Tomorrow for Africa.

Monetisation strategy

We make money in different ways.

- Foreign exchange commission, when a user exchanges currencies, performs a cross border money transfer or trades a stock domiciled in foreign currency.

- Commissions from third-party partners and billers who get paid or sell through Eversend like phone credit payments.

- We intend to provide loans, which will generate interest income

- Merchant payments where we intend to charge as low as 0.5% instead of the 3.9% being charged in Africa to use VISA/Mastercard today.

Use of proceeds

Product Development - We will use some of this money to beef up our product and engineering team so we can ship faster.

User Acquisition - We need to accelerate our user acquisition efforts.

Working Capital - Some of the funds will remain in company accounts as working capital to beef up our netting off reserves.

Market Expansion - We intend to expand our offering to Nigeria, Francophone Africa, and Europe to make a real connection between Diaspora and Africa.

Regulatory Compliance - When we close our seed round, some of the funds will be used for regulatory compliance.