2020 Rewind At Wallets Africa
We love what we do at Wallets Africa and we love the satisfaction we get from making it easier for people to transact. Like we’ve always said, we believe transacting in the digital age should be as seamless as keeping in touch on WhatsApp.
This year, we came closer to our dreams of doing more and pushing the boundaries. We’ll be doing a rewind of some of the good stuff we did this year. So take a seat, buckle your belts and join us on this journey of rewind.
Product Updates ⚙️
February: Wallets for Developers
In February, we released our developer APIs to the world. The goal was simple. We wanted to help businesses and developers offer financial services to their existing customer base and save them from the heavy lifting.
At the moment, we have about four APIs available and are working to ensure that more are available. You can read more about this here and join the developer community here
March: Third Party Apps
With your Wallets app, you’re able to send money to other third party apps that you love and use easily! We started off with most financial platforms because young people are more concerned with their spending behaviour and we’re working on making it easier to fund the accounts you use from your app. You can find out more about this update here
April: Sub Wallets
April came with sub-wallets, one of the most interesting features on your account. Sub-wallets are like mini-wallets accounts that allow you to create other accounts that you can manage. We started off with having this just for business users, but now, it’s opened up to everyone. What this means is that a father can open an account for his kid and teach them about savings. And a CEO can open accounts for his marketing and design teams such that they have separate logins. There are multiple user case scenarios, as we’ve seen with this product and we’re going to keep making it better.
Right now, every account is allowed to create about five sub-accounts. If you need to create more than five, you’ll have to upgrade to a premium account. You can send an email to support@wallets.africa to get more details about this.
We’re trying to understand what we can do better next year so please fill this form and let us know how we can make the experience better for you.
April: New Dashboard
We also re-designed our web dashboard in April. Out with the old, and in with the new. This new dashboard on the web allows you to access most, if not all of the amazing features you had on your mobile app.
With it, you were able to create sub-wallets, access your dollar card and all its functionalities on the web, request money from friends and family via a special link and also make bulk payments by linking to a Google sheet.
June: New Capital
In June, we had announced that we had raised some capital in our quest to keep building Africa’s foremost digital financial platform. We shared the update on our Medium and how we intend to make use of the money.
July: Dark Mode
The internet was filled with a lot of challenges this year and one we enjoyed was the #FlipTheSwitch one. In July, we flipped our own switch and introduced the dark mode to our app.
July: Transaction Receipts
July was a busy month for us as we also worked on receipts for when you make transactions. Customers wanted to be able to send something to the receiving parties indicating that they had made a transfer, and they wanted something more than just a screenshot and that birthed transaction receipts which are up and running now!
July: Multiple Cards
Now you get not one, not two but five cards per user! And if you add it up, that’s about ten cards — five dollar cards and five naira cards for everyone. So you can create various cards for various needs you have and have it work just the way you want it.
You can read more about this here
September: Paystack Integration
In September, we made it possible for business users to link their Wallets account to their Paystack account and receive settlements on the go. Think of simple and easy!
November: Transfer to Business
In November, we worked on Transfer for Business which allows you to send money to businesses easily and pay for goods and services that you use, easily and without the stress.
You can see what this is and what this means for you here
November: Bitcoin
We also worked on the new bitcoin feature for Wallets in November. Before now, users had the option to just fund their account with bitcoin but we took it the extra mile by allowing you to receive, buy and send bitcoin anywhere.
Here’s a video guide on how to fund your bitcoin wallet
November: Visa Integration
Still in November, we announced that we had joined forces with global payments giant, Visa to issue cards to businesses and employees. Visa will power our new naira and dollar cards, already launched.
Here’s more from the press release we sent.
November: Referral Bonuses
Last but not the least, we made it possible to receive bonuses when you refer Wallets Africa to a business. You can send your referral code to your friends who run businesses startups and the likes and once they (the business) uploads all their incorporation documents and makes their first deposit, you get your referral bonus of N500.
November: More Funding Options
We added a Sterling virtual account number to your dashboard as well. Now you have more options to fund your Wallets account.You can either make use of
- Bank transfer — using your Sterling and/or your Rubies/Highstreet MFB virtual account numbers
- Cards
- Bitcoin
Still In The Works 🔨
Naira Cards
Because of our new integration with Visa, we put a hold to the Verve cards we were issuing. We’ll commence issuing cards soon and we’ll be sharing this update across all platforms once it is sorted.
International Transfers
We put a hold on this to ensure that we were delivering the best service and we’d like you to understand that sometimes, the best things take a lot of time. We’re building this up and we’ll let you know once you can make use of this service.
What’s Next? 👀
We’re thankful that in the middle of the pandemic, we were able to do all of this.
At the moment, we have about 5,000 businesses and 70,000 users who make use of our product and we’re trying to optimise for better. Here’s to doing more in 2021.
Who are we again?
We are a digital financial platform for Africans.
Download the Wallets app on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store if you haven’t already.
We’re also trying to understand what we can do better next year so please fill this form and let us know how we can make the experience better.
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