App gives customers more power in bank transactions

It all started when one young man complained on how it was tough for him to make financial decisions regarding banking his hard-earned cash. This was after he realised that there were so many hidden charges which unsuspecting customers end up paying to get financial services.

This inspired Nehemiah Makau to team up with his three colleagues; Felix Magani, Tina Pim and Cedric Shimuli to develop an app that they named Ban.Q and launched it on Google Play Store in December 2018, as a repository of decision support for users and a marketplace for financial services providers.

“The whole idea was built on personal challenges we faced trying to keep and grow the little money we had. We would scribble raw ideas to try to solve the problem. Eventually we agreed on a solution and now, Ban.Q is a community,” explains Mr Makau, 26, the project manager.

When Digital Business browsed through the app features, we experienced an interface that allows users to choose the best services from all commercial banks in Kenya.

“One of us had just landed from a journey and needed to bank some left-over cash but discouraged by the pain involved since the financial institution had branches on the other side of a busy highway, queues at the branch and lack of knowledge on how the cash will erode due to the unavailability of information regarding interest rates,” says the project’s lead developer Mr Magani, 26.

And with that, the gap of how to dodge hurdles of making make money and keeping it was identified. There was also the question of why a customer must be forced into loyalty to one or very few financial institutions.

From identifying the most reasonable mobile loan providers, bidding to send deposit requests to deposit taking microfinance institutions to browsing various cash charges regarding cheque books, remittances, letters of credit, search fees, standing orders, statements, bonds, direct debits and safe custodies, one can only forget about physical visits to banks.

Variably skilled in computer science, finance and arts, the quartet who initially struggled to pool funds for their project say that their biggest initiative is the robust desire to make revolutionary changes to the money cycle in peoples’ lives.

“We also found ourselves, as the owners of money, missing out on the business end of mobile-based lending. Something needs to be done to shift the power to the money owner, like we have seen in areas such as retail and communications,” says 22-year-old Ms Tina Pim, the lead researcher.

Ban.Q helps people to compare the total cost of engagement with mobile loan providers and focus on sensitising borrowers to promote responsible and informed decisions.

“We are not here to influence any sector; ours is about the money owner making informed and beneficial choices. Money is a scarce resource. Getting money is hard, keeping it is harder, and means to growing it has been skewed to the disadvantage of the money owner,” explains Mr Shimuli, a 23-year-old developer before adding that getting a loan is no easy task.

Many mobile phone-based micro-loan offers in Kenya come with high costs, invasion to privacy and are laden with penalties.

The youthful developers saw the need for wider choices as pertains access to financial services. Now, with the app, a user can access an array of savings accounts, loans or investment solutions, which they can then choose from and they can visit different providers to compare products, rates, offers and deals.

Most of the costs that the group incur pertain to retaining good quality technical, research and legal resources.