Over the next decade, programmable money, specifically stablecoins, will permeate and transform every aspect of the world’s economic and financial infrastructure.
What we’re building
Accrue is building a USD-stablecoin agent network called Cashramp. This agent network will serve as rails for individuals and businesses to send and receive payments across Africa in minutes. Think of it as Mpesa, but on a continent-wide scale, programmable, and powered by stablecoins.
You may believe that crypto payments are still too early, and you would be correct. Cryptocurrencies are still too new and clunky to successfully convince a large enough market to abandon the familiar and widespread fiat system. That’s where our agent network comes in! It’s essentially a migration wizard that seamlessly integrates with existing fiat systems and gently onboards everyday individuals and businesses onto the utility in crypto.
Any individual or business interacting with our agent network will transact using their familiar and widely-accepted local currency. Our agent network will invisibly bridge fiat-to-crypto, allowing their local currency to gain the superpowers of programmable money, such as low fees, instant settlement, and frictionless cross-border payments.
How we’ll build it
At its core, our agent network is a marketplace. We’ll build a marketplace from scratch in each country we set up shop in.
Marketplaces famously have a chicken-and-egg problem, in that for a marketplace to succeed, it must attract buyers and sellers simultaneously. In the context of our agent network, we need to attract agents, but to do so, we must bring in customers (individuals and businesses) with whom they can trade. Both parties will be reluctant to participate in a market without the other.
One solution to that problem is to seed the marketplace by offering valuable products and services to attract customers. For us, that solution is manifested in the trojan horse that is Accrue — a delightful consumer product that allows everyday non-crypto-savvy people to send money across Africa within five minutes, on-off-ramp fiat/crypto, spend without bounds with virtual dollar cards, and save in stablecoins.
As the demand for Accrue’s consumer offering grows in a market, agents will sign up to supply liquidity in exchange for earnings. This dynamic will extend the network’s reach and liquidity depth. Once the agent network has an expansive reach and liquidity depth, we’ll scale with B2B offerings.
- Cashramp API: Charge your customers in any local currency and receive USD stablecoins instantly.
- Accrue Commerce: Sell anything to anyone in Africa, and receive payment in USD stablecoins.
Our progress so far
- Accrue is globally available, and widely beloved. It has a 4.4⭐ rating on the App and Google Play Store.
- Here are some testimonials from our customers.
- We recently climbed to first place in the GH Free Finance Apps chart.
- ~53% of people who use our agent network for cross-border payments return to use it at least 3 more times. On average, 15 more times. Our customers are delighted by the following:
- Speed: Payments take less than five minutes to settle.
- Cost: We charge a flat $2 fee.
- Ease-of-use: Accrue is designed from the ground up to be extremely friendly to non-crypto-savvy people.
- Cashramp has processed ~$1.1m and has a 98% satisfaction rating.
- Active in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Cameroon, and Zambia.
- Depending on liquidity & responsiveness, active agents earn as much as $150/month.
- Cashramp’s API is live and used by several businesses with a multi-country user base to accept local currency payments and get USD stablecoins instantly.
The end-game
Once Accrue has executed most of this master plan over the next 5-7 years, and Cashramp is widely adopted, anyone will be able to move value around Africa in less than five minutes.
Think of the second-order effects of what providing programmable continent-wide commerce infrastructure will enable. What wonderful things will be built?
I cannot overstate how thrilled I am to be working with Adesuwa and our crew 😉 on solving this ambitious problem.