Ohana Africa
A group-savings and peer-lending fintech that digitises Africa's informal savings circles — tontines, chamas and susus. Live in Togo, Kenya and Nigeria with 10K+ installs, bilingual English and French, and four payment rails including TMoney and M-Pesa. Built with my team under my supervision.
What Problem Did This Project Solve?
Money that belongs to a group, not a person — and everyone has to be able to see it.
- Informal savings groups run on trust and paper ledgers; disputes over who contributed what are common and corrosive.
- Balances do not belong to one user — group wallets, pool balances and individual wallets all coexist and money moves between them.
- Three launch markets with four different payment rails, each with its own confirmation semantics and failure modes.
- Lending needs a basis for trust when formal credit history does not exist for most users.
- Connections drop mid-transaction, and a retried withdrawal that debits twice would destroy confidence permanently.
- Two languages, English and French, across markets that also differ in regulation and payment behaviour.
What Solution Was Delivered?
A multi-balance wallet architecture with group governance encoded in software.
- Distinct balance types — user wallets, group wallets, pool balances and sub-accounts — with an explicit transfer matrix governing what can move where.
- Group governance enforced by the system: a minimum of two managers per group, and manager approval required for withdrawals, expenses and disbursements.
- Four payment rails integrated behind one interface — TMoney, M-Pesa, Ecobank and card payments.
- TrustScore-based peer lending, giving members a credit signal built from their own contribution behaviour.
- Offline-resilient sessions and hardened withdrawal handling to eliminate double-withdrawal risk on retry.
- Full English and French localisation across the app and marketing site.
What Can This Project Do?
Group Savings Pools
Create a group, appoint managers and open contribution pools that members pay into and withdraw from.
Multi-Balance Wallets
User wallets, group wallets, pool balances and sub-accounts, with an explicit matrix of permitted transfers.
TrustScore Lending
Peer lending priced against a trust signal built from a member's own contribution history.
Four Payment Rails
TMoney, M-Pesa, Ecobank and card payments integrated behind a single interface.
Encoded Governance
Two managers minimum per group and approval gates on withdrawals, expenses and disbursements.
Bilingual, Three Markets
English and French across Togo, Kenya and Nigeria.
Built With Modern Engineering Standards
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