We are very excited to announce that Stax users in Kenya will now get extra airtime (bonus) whenever they use Mpesa to top up their airtime on the Stax app.

The Bonus

Stax allows users in more than 6 African countries to send and request money, buy airtime, pay bills and transfer money between their own accounts with or without data or stable internet connection. That’s right! Stax works offline; and, in addition, gives you complete control of your money by enabling you to manage your multiple banks or mobile money accounts in one app.

To go a step further and starting with Kenya, buying airtime on Stax now comes with an extra benefit.

Every time you buy airtime (of at least 50 ksh) and pay using your Mpesa on Stax, you’d get between 3% & 5% in bonus.

How Does It Work?

• Buy at least 50 Ksh worth of airtime on the Stax app and pay using Mpesa.
• Immediately after the successful transaction, you’d instantly get credited with the bonus.
• The bonus goes to the number is airtime both for. i.e. if you buy for your phone number, the bonus is credited to your number. But if you buy for a friend, the bonus goes to their number.
• The airtime bonus is only available to users in Kenya.
• Bonus is available for only airtime purchases between 50 Ksh and 10K Ksh
• You need an airtime balance of at least 1 Ksh and enough MPESA balance to pay for the airtime you want to purchase. For example, if you plan to buy 50 Ksh airtime, you’d need at least 50 Ksh in your Mpesa plus 1 Ksh in airtime balance. Likewise, if you plan to purchase 300 Ksh airtime, you’d need at least 300 Ksh in your Mpesa plus 1 Ksh in airtime balance.
• The 1 Ksh airtime deduction is a telco fee and it doesn’t change, no matter the amount of airtime purchased.
• However, your airtime bonus increases the more airtime you buy. for instance: 50 Ksh gives you a 3% bonus. 100 Kshgives you a 4% bonus. 200 Ksh gives you a 4.75% bonus. 500 Ksh gives you a 4.80% bonus. 1,000 Ksh gives you a 4.90% bonus. 10,000 Ksh gives you a 5% bonus

see here for the complete list of bonuses.

Try it now

To enjoy the airtime bonus when you buy airtime for yourself or someone,

• open your Stax app. If you don’t have the Stax app, download it from Google Playstore.
• Select “buy airtime” or top up on the bonus banner at the top of the home screen.
• You just have to buy airtime of at least 50 Ksh for any network for yourself or someone else and pay with your Mpesa
• You’d receive an extra recharge immediately after your successful transaction.

Try it now.

Extra airtime = Extra minutes with your loved ones, and more texts.

In January, we wished you to a #BrokeFree2022, but we know that it takes more than wishes to make this happen. To avoid being broke this year, you need financial education in different facets of your financial life. So, to help you increase your financial literacy and be more intentional about your finances this year, we have gathered six thought leaders to share tips that cover six core areas of finances — planning and cutting costs, making money, saving, investing, and protecting your money. Consider this a guide to a #BrokeFree2022.

Register here to attend this event.

The event will run from February 21st — 25th, 2022.

Here’s the topic line up:

Financial Goal Setting: How to Budget, Cut Costs and Deal with Black Tax

Speaker: Oluwatosin Olaseinde, founder of Money Africa and Ladda.ng (Oluwatosin Olaseinde)

Time: 7pm WAT, Monday, Feb 21, 2022.

Venue: IG LIve on @joinstax

How to Build Passive Income

Speaker: John Obidi, founder of Headstart Africa (John Obidi)

Time: 7pm WAT, Tuesday, Feb 22, 2022.

Venue: IG LIve on @joinstax

How to Build a Savings Habit

Speaker: Sola Adesakin, founder of Smart Stewards

Time: 7pm WAT, Wednesday, Feb 23, 2022.

Venue: IG LIve on @joinstax

Investment for Complete Beginners

Speaker: Jennifer Oriwigwe a.k.a @financialjennifer

Time: 7pm WAT, Thursday, Feb 24, 2022

Venue: IG LIve on @joinstax

How to Build and Protect Wealth

Speaker: Kalu Aja a.k.a @FinPlanKaluAja1

Time: 7pm WAT Friday, Feb 25, 2022

Venue: Twitter Spaces on @joinstax

All hosted by Blessing Abeng — a branding and communications thought leader and our content mastermind at Stax.

This event is brought to you by Stax, a product by Hover. It is a simple way to send money, buy airtime, pay bills, and receive money across Africa. No internet required. No extra charges. Download now to try Stax.

Don’t forget to register for the virtual financial literacy event — A Guide to a #BrokeFree2022. Register here. Also, invite someone you want to enjoy a #BrokeFree2022 with.

Here’s what you need to do right now:

1. Take a pen and paper and write 3 things you want to happen financially for you this year. Dream big!
2. Under each one, write one thing you will do everyday or every month to help you achieve it. If wishes were horses, beggars will ride but they are not. First you must turn a wish to a goal and add consistent action to make it to make it a reality.
3. Text one person you want to hold you accountable to your daily actions and decide on how you will reward yourself everyday for showing up consistently.

Done?

Now you are 50% ready for a #BrokeFree2022, the rest is dependent on your discipline to take action. If you can be disciplined, by December 2022, you will be proud of yourself!

If you read this tip, wish 3 friends you want to see succeed, a #BrokeFree2022 using the hashtag and tag @joinstax

On coming out of Beta, we featured on Product Hunt, Beta Page, Benjamin Dada, Tech Moran, and TechCabal. In addition, we wrote our very first product explainer article where we shared light on why we ask for phone permissions when you first join Stax. This article was the first on our blog, and now, we have a total of 15 articles.

Since then, it’s been a wild ride!

The product as we knew it has evolved:

• We have acquired over 170k users.
• The team has grown, and we learned many lessons about building consumer-focused products in Africa.
• Most importantly, our passion for this mission has grown bigger.

In the following few paragraphs, I’d share the most significant feats we have accomplished this year. I would have shared our failures too, but to be honest, we have had a terrific year: a couple of failed experiments here and there and lots of challenges, but each of those gave us the right signals we needed to iterate and win. So yea, here are wins:

Growth

We ended May 2021 — the month Stax launched to the public — with around 2.7k Monthly Active Users.

Today, seven months later, we are at almost 40k Monthly Active users. That’s about a 1400% increase in MAUs.

On some days in the last two months, we had well over 2000 daily active users. That’s what our total monthly active users were in May. It is wild.

Still on growth, When we launched, we were mainly present in Nigeria and Kenya with less than 25 services in total. Today, we fully support six countries (Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda) and lots more with partial support. Across Africa, we have over 100 banks and mobile money accounts available for users to use on Stax.

Stax Money Mappers

In June, we launched the Stax money mappers scheme, where we pay our users and fans up to $100 to map USSD codes for us and thus help us add new services to Stax faster and better. It’s been an enormous success so far!

Stax - Send money offline 💸 on Twitter: "For every USSD flow you map on Stax, we will pay you up to $10. If you map 10 flows, that $100 :D. Read our article on money mapping and how you make money from it on Stax. https://t.co/TJKwfoX11p / Twitter"

For every USSD flow you map on Stax, we will pay you up to $10. If you map 10 flows, that $100 :D. Read our article on money mapping and how you make money from it on Stax. https://t.co/TJKwfoX11p

We have over 21k registered money mappers, and more than 4000 of them have actually done a money mapper transaction/activity. In total, we have paid out $12,215 to our community.

Of this $12k, one user has earned $685, another $575, another $390 and so on. It’s been amazing giving back to our users and fans, but even more, it’s been so overwhelming seeing the support and quality of feedback coming from them.

Some of our Favourite Content Features this Year

• An article on Benjamin Dada on how Stax is using USSD-technology to increase financial inclusivity for Africans
• An Article on Nairametrics titled: ‘Looking to the future: Are traditional banking apps a thing of the past?’
• We collaborated with exceptional social media influencers like Salem King, Dimeji, Arinola (BBN) and Alma Asinobi to spread the gospel of Stax. (Click on the influencer’s name to see the content they made with us).
• Amazing videos reviews by Tobi Ayeni (Miss Techy) and Izzi Boye

Santa Stax

We successfully ran our Christmas campaign — Santa Stax and gave out lovely prizes, including airtime, $100 cash, gift cards, spa voucher, $50 Bolt discount code and a BRAND NEW ANDROID PHONE: SAMSUNG A12.

This campaign lasted for one week, with one to three winners picked daily to win a prize. Shoutout to Bolt, Money Africa, and influencers — Alma Asinobi, ItsTowima, Lazywrita, Arinola, Thisthingcalledfashion, and Dimeji who partnered/collaborated with us on this.

USSD Directory

We are committed to making your life easier when it comes to your transactions across Africa. So we thought, ‘what will be a great way to help USSD lovers & fervent users find USSD codes in their country?’ — and voila! ussd.directory was birthed.

ussd.directory is a comprehensive list of USSD codes for banks and mobile networks across Africa.

Why is this important? There are thousands of USSD codes in Africa, and you cannot remember them all, so let ussd.directory be your memory. There is no need to search google, ask friends, or cram codes across all the banks and MoMo you use.

Product

Like I said at the beginning of this article, Stax is nothing like it was seven months ago; this is because the product has evolved so so much. Here are some of our product wins.

• In-app Support: To make it easier for our users to talk to us and give us feedback, we added five ways for you to reach us right within the app.
• Multi-account support: As more and more people began to use Stax, we learned that many do not just have multiple accounts across different banks and MoMo but also have different accounts within the same bank. For example, two GTB accounts. We iterated for this use case and added support for this. Now, if you have two or more accounts with one bank, you can link both to Stax and transfer between them.
• In-app Finance tips: Every single day on Stax, when you open the app, you’d see specially curated financial advice for you. When you click on it, you can read it in full and scroll to read tips from previous days. We are helping our users gain financial literacy while using Stax with this feature.
• In-app USSD Library: Can’t find a particular service on Stax? That’s why we added the in-app USSD library, where you can manually search and dial USSD codes. The in-app USSD library removes any temporary inconvenience you might face if the service you use is not already automated on Stax. But be rest assured, we are always adding new services. This year alone, we added over 80 bank and mobile money accounts that you can use directly on Stax.
• Experiments: We ran a ton of experiments this year. From multivariate tests for onboarding that increased activation by 60% in 3 months to product feature experiments to retention experiments that increased our monthly retention by 30% between Aug and Nov and lots more.
• We also optimized a bunch of stuff. Like how you link accounts, where your automated USSD flow shows after a transaction, how to see your transactions history and much more. On a daily, we squashed many bugs.

Prototyping USDC & Winning a $15,000 grant from Stellar

We got into a blockchain Bootcamp organized by Stellar in partnership with SDF. We created a USDC wallet prototype during the BootCamp and sent USDC from Kenya to Nigeria without using mobile data. We leveraged Hover’s core technology, USSD automation, to enable “offline” access to USDC. As a result of this, we earned a $15,000 award.

This is the very beginning of our longer-term crypto play. In 2022, we will launch a self-custody USDC wallet for all Stax users, and they will be able to manage their money offline. Using Stax to create a USDC wallet is ~1 billion times easier than using a more traditional wallet app, and thus, this will make it easier for people to onboard onto crypto in Africa. We can’t wait for this to go live.

Research at Stax

This year, we completed 12 different research studies and had the opportunity to interact with users from Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, and Ghana! Since we do not have access to users directly, recruiting ideal research participants has always been challenging, but it has enabled us to be more creative in deciding what types of studies to run and how to conduct them.

2022 — What’s next for Stax

• New brand: We are currently working on a brand refresh and can’t wait to debut our new look across all brand assets — app, web & social.
• Stax USDC: One of our priorities for the new year is to launch a self-custody USDC wallet for all Stax users, where they’d be able to manage their money offline.
• Stax Rewards: Launching Stax Referral program and our incentivized transactions scheme #StaxandEarn.
• Rolling out a different version of request money called “Collect.”
• Collaborating with more influencers across Africa and running outstanding campaigns.
• Stax pay, Open source contributions and many more
• And oh! My personal goal: Hitting 100k MAU & 1M new users. (We can do it, and we are going to do it)

S/O to Alex Kombo (Principal Andriod Engineer), Me — Peace Itimi (Head of Growth), Blessing Abeng (Snr. Content & Comms Mgr), Itunuoluwa Akinsehinde (Visual Designer), & Samuel Ralek (Principal Backend Engineer), who joined us this year.

Also, big shoutout to Ishuah Kariuki and Justin Scherer, who left us to join other amazing companies. We wouldn’t be here without you.

And to the rest of the team — the OG’s — Jess, Ben, David, Tobi, Wangu, thank’s for sticking it out.

Let’s do more incredible things in 2022.

In the last couple of months, we have learned so much as individuals and as a team. We wanted to share these learnings with you, so we asked every team member to share one lesson 2021 has taught them about building consumer-focused product with focus on Stax and these were their answers:

Alex Kombo (Principal Andriod Engineer)

Feedback from early users of your product is important. The experience these users get is key in cultivating an early following that onboards the next hundred or thousand users. I’ve learnt to listen to our users more and gained valuable insights from team members.

Peace Itimi (Head of Growth)

Growth is a lot of things acting together.

Itunuoluwa Ayanfe (Visual Designer)

You need to stay on your toes at all times to tackle any obstacles that may come your way, with speed and tact. You also need to be empathy-oriented because you are dealing with humans, not just numbers on the screen. They are not just your users, they are real people.

Tobi Akinpelu (Senior Andriod Engineer)

People are less likely to uninstall your app if it came through referrals. Word of mouth is the best and most reliable way to get long-lasting customers.

Wangu Mwenda (Senior UX Researcher)

When things aren’t working in the way you anticipated, keep trying new ideas. Ben often says “you can’t keep treading water” and that’s really it. You have to keep moving even if you don’t completely know where you’re going yet.

David Kutalek (CTO)

Marketing is super important!

Blessing Abeng (Senior Communications Mgr)

The customer’s needs should always come first. They want to know that you care about them and truly see them. So, make it easy for them to understand who you are and what your solution can do for them. As a rule of thumb, KEEP IT SIMPLE. Leverage storytelling and use examples they can relate to. The only way to achieve these is to ask questions and truly listen to what they are saying and not saying. What is said and left unsaid are equally important.

Ben Lyon (CEO)

Trust is everything. Reliability plays an outsized role in trust.

Jess (Head of Product)

Jess couldn’t decide one, so these are three lessons she learned:

The path to scale involves more tradeoffs and complexity than I ever could have imagined.

People are getting ripped off by telcos and banks. I knew this before, but after looking at some 250K USSD transactions this year, it has become the most motivating aspect of this for me. Stax NEEDS to exist in this world — people have an inherent right to access their information and money. they shouldn’t be charged a toll by redundant gatekeepers. DEATH TO FEES.

Communications really matter! A lot.

As we continue to learn, we will continue to share with you. Consider this our gift to you and we hope to achieve two things by sharing this:

If you are a Startup founder building a B2C company, we hope that these lessons make your journey easier and faster.

If you are a Staxxer, we hope that you see that we are learning daily to ensure that Stax is the best it can be for you. We built Stax to reduce the barriers to financial inclusion and we are achieving that daily by making it easier for you to access your money, send money, buy airtime, all offline. You can trust that we will continue to make Stax better and share our learnings along the way.

Happy Holidays.

In other words, assets fill your pocket while liabilities empty your pockets.

Now that you know what we mean by assets and liabilities, does your phone take money out of your pocket, or does it fill it?

Like every other thing, mobile phones have their merits and demerits. A phone if used properly can fill your pockets.

Mobile phones have gone beyond a channel to stay in touch; they have now evolved into money -making machines. According to Business Insider Africa, a certain influencer made an average of $5,000 per month last year through affiliate links alone. Also, Nate O’Brien, a personal finance enthusiast earned about $444,000 in ad revenue from YouTube within a period of one year..

There is so much money to be made from the internet. If you are considering other streams of income to fill your pockets, then you need to take a look at these options:

Online courses, Advertising, Voice- overs, Online services and Investing.

You can also use the “Request Money” feature on Stax to request money from your loved ones and fill your pocket. It doesn’t require internet access. Turn your phone into a money making machine — an ASSET not a liability.

Also, if you need a phone that can be an asset, you might want to enter our #SantaStax giveaway. On the seventh day, we are giving away a BRAND NEW SAMSUNG A12 PHONE and you can turn this into a money making machine.

Participate in the Giveaway on our social media platforms. Follow @joinstax across social media platforms (These are links to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) and turn on post notifications. So you don’t miss it@ It’s on already.

It’s going to be an amazing experience for all current and potential users of Stax.

Tell your friends about #SantaStax.

What we are here to help you establish is this — Has eating out been eating away your pockets.

You probably have never addressed the issue consciously. A particular user once discovered after tracking his expenses for the month, that he spent up to 50% of his income on feeding. Not because he was eating a lot, but because he was mostly eating out. He tried having home cooked meals consistently for two weeks and discovered he spent only 10% of his income to feed his belly. This is less than half of his usual feeding expense. This does not mean he was eating less or unhealthy. Instead, he was making the most use of his income.

It is okay to include eating out in your eating plan once in a while. If it amounts to a bulk of your income, then you have a problem at hand.

Here’s what we are challenging you to do — examine your expenses. Your belly might just be what’s standing in the way of hitting your financial goals.

At Stax we encourage you to spend on enjoyment, but have a budget for it. We want you to have a #BrokeFree2022 that’s the hashtag. So, have create a budget for takeouts and home-cooked meals this December.

And next time you need to pay for takeout or dine-in, use your Stax app.

For daily financial tips like this, download Stax.

Happy Holidays Staxxer!

If you are African, you have probably heard of Detty December and if you haven’t here’s a definition from Urban Dictionary loosely paraphrased:

Detty December:

A time in December especially in Lagos, Nigeria when you spend lots of money and party with all your might to make up for the hard work you’ve put in from January till November. Themes involve concerts, vacations, party and stuff.

December is here! The month of festivities, enjoyment and BONUSES! We know that the joy of festivities creates a conducive environment for spending because it’s the season to be jolly, but “jolly” costs money. This makes January feel super long, as though there are 45 days of January. By January 2, 2022, your account balance may be red and it might feel like a super long ride to payday!

So we have a better idea to ensure Detty December doesn’t do you dirty.

Transfer the amount you need to have a comfortable January to a separate account and try not to touch it.

You can use Stax to transfer between your accounts seamlessly. We know Stax makes it easy for you to send money to yourself, so we advise that you remove that account from your Stax account for December and add it back in January.

Don’t say you will do it tomorrow. Tomorrow might be too late. Don’t say you don’t have have internet or your bank app is not opening or you can’t remember the USSD code to transfer money out of your account for January. Stax lets you send money offline and you don’t need your bank app or USSD codes to use Stax. So transfer January money out of your spending account and keep it somewhere safe. Then transfer it back in January.

We wish you a broke-free 2022 and an amazing Detty December.

Ps: Download the Stax app for daily financial tips like this.

If you are a Staxxer, we want you to know that you have been supportive, loyal and amazing and we would like to thank you by doing something special for you.

Christmas is in the air and to spread even more joy, our very own Santa — #SantaStax would be giving lovely prizes daily for one week (7 days). There are lots of prizes to be won including airtime, cash, gift cards to your favorite stores, spa voucher, Bolt rides and ultimately a BRAND NEW ANDROID PHONE: SAMUSUNG A12.

What are the gifts?

• Day 1: $20 Airtime in your local currency for 3 lucky winners
• Day 2: $50 Shopping voucher for 2 lucky winners
• Day 3: Massage at a spa in your country
• Day 4: One Year Subscription to Money Africa Community
• Day 5: Free Bolt Rides worth $50!
• Day 6: $100 Cash Prize!
• Day 7: BRAND NEW SAMUSUNG A12 PHONE 🥳

How can you participate?

Every day, we will share different tasks for you to participate in. Some will be very simple and others, not that simple. But we can assure you that there will always be a winner.

Follow @joinstax across social media platforms (These are links to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) and turn on post notifications. It’s going to be an amazing experience for all current and potential users of Stax. Get ready for #SantaStax and tell your friends too.

Who should participate in this giveaway?

• People who like and use Stax
• People who like Giveaways
• People who have never won giveaways
• People who have won giveaways
• People who want to win at least one of the gifts in the giveaway
• People who want a new android phone.

What are the terms and conditions?

These rules apply to all competitions, prize draws, promotions, giveaways and suchlike that are promoted on and run through our website, app or social media channels.

• You must be following Stax to win. If you haven’t already, follow Stax on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Medium.
• Our competitions are free to enter (no purchase required, unless otherwise stated).
• Staxxers (Stax users) will be prioritised at every given time, so download Stax now to stand a better chance of winning.
• Participants must be a real person, at least 18 years old and resides in one of the 10 African countries Stax is present in — Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Côte d’Ivoire, Tanzania, Zambia, Congo, Cameroon, Ethiopia (proof of address or age may be required).
• Participants must not be our employee, officer or partner of any person or organisation involved in the running of the competition, and you must not be a family relation of any such person.
• Only organic engagement counts (so if you buy followers, likes, etc. We will know and you won’t be chosen. We are techies after all).
• The maximum number of gifts to be won per person in this particular giveaway is one.
• Stax reserves the rights to choose the winners we dim fit. Our decision is final.
• Any entries received before the opening or after the closing of the competition will be invalid and will not be entered into the competition.
• No responsibility can be accepted for entries not received for whatever reason.
• A competition shall open for entries at the time and on the date specified on our social media channels, and similarly, shall close to entries at the time and on the date specified on our social media channels.
• We reserve the right to cancel or amend the competition and these terms and conditions without notice in the event of a catastrophe, war, civil or military disturbance, act of God or any actual or anticipated breach of any applicable law or regulation or any other event outside of our control. Any changes to the competition will be notified to entrants as soon as possible by us.
• We may undertake publicity activities relating to competitions and prize awards. The winner therefore agrees to the use of their name, photograph and disclosure of town or region of residence in any post-prize-winning publicity names, surnames, towns or regions of residence and prize details.
• You grant to us an exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual and irrevocable licence to copy, store, edit, distribute, transmit and publish your competition entries.
• You warrant to us that you created your competition entries, that you own all of the copyright in those entries, and that our use of the entries in accordance with these rules will not infringe any person’s intellectual property rights or other legal rights.
• No cash alternative to the prizes will be offered. The prizes are not transferable. Prizes are subject to availability and we reserve the right to substitute any prize with another of equivalent value without giving notice.
• The results of a competition will be announced on our website before the 25th of December, 2021 11:59 GMT following the closing date of the competition (23rd of December, 2021 11:59 GMT). The announcement may include the name and photograph, the town or region of residence and prize details of each prize winner. All gifts will be disbursed before 31st December, 2021 11:59 GMT)
• Competition prize winners will be notified of the competition result by email (if address is asked for/provided) or by direct message/post on social media (winners must therefore ‘like’ or ‘follow’ our social media accounts in order to be contacted about prizes)
• Competition entries shall be judged or winners selected on the basis of those criteria specified on our website and/or social media channels in relation to the competition.
• Reasonable efforts will be made to contact the prize winner for 3 days (72 hours after first contact) but if the winner fails to respond to our notification attempts within this time or provide an address for delivery of the prize or fails to meet any of the eligibility requirements or is otherwise unable to comply with the competition terms and conditions, we reserve the right to disqualify that entrant and offer the prize to the next eligible entrant and thereafter until a winner is found.
• If a competition participant does not meet the eligibility requirements or is subject to any entry restrictions, that participant shall not be entitled to be adjudged a winner, and will not be entitled to a prize in any circumstances.
• Entry into the competition will be deemed as acceptance of all of these terms and conditions.

You might just be the lucky winner of one of #SantaStax gifts 🎁 so… come prepared to win! We are rooting for every single Staxxer! Have a joyful holiday celebration!

Drop a clap if you are ready to playyyyyyy.

Let the Games Begin!

About Stax

Stax is a an app created to help you send money, buy airtime, and request money, ALL OFFLINE. Try the Stax App and drop a review on Playstore. If you don’t have an android phone, that is all the reason you need to participate in this GIVEAWAY!

Hello Staxxer,

Blessing here! I am sure Peace has told you only nice things about me. If you missed out on Peace’s sweet words about me, read our July Roundup.

This month’s roundup is a 2 in 1 roundup. A compilation of the amazing things Stax and Staxxers accomplished in August and September.

Let’s start with August.

August

We surpassed 50K downloads!

We tuned up our Playstore interface and updated it with new descriptive images and videos. Check out our playstore page here.

We dined with Staxxers

In August, we got to dine with Staxxers in Nigeria and Ghana physically. It was so much fun. We ate, talked about life and their experience with Stax. They got to speak to their favorite Stax team members physically and virtually. We think we should have more across all the countries we are present in. What country should we visit next? Tell us in the comment section.

We made Stax better for you

We prioritized making the product better for you, so here’s what’s New, Improved, and Coming Soon.

New: We added 21 new services to Stax, added USSD library under Settings, added an offline badge that shows when a Staxxer is offline, designed a new onboarding flow to inspire you to connect all your accounts at once during your first minutes after downloading the app.

Improved: We made it easier to find recipient contact and select account when buying airtime and sending money, improved transaction reliability for several Nigerian services, and definitely squashed some UI/functionality bugs!

Coming Soon: We are working very hard to support multiple accounts within the same bank, fulfill a Stax payment request on any mobile browser, support Amharic language and help you pay more bills.

Now to September!

September was filled with so many wins!

We got selected to participate in the DFS Lab’s Blockchain Bootcamp in collaboration with Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), where one of our prototype features was deemed ready-to-launch!. Big shout out to Tobi, Kombo, and Ben! The superheroes who made this win happen!

We hit an all-time high of organic comments on a post on Instagram, and our Twitter has been buzzing! To contribute to our future all-time highs, follow us on Instagram and Twitter and engage with our content.

September has literally been a growth season for us! We cleared out inactive followers on Instagram and had a fresh start. We are almost at 400 followers already! So exciting.

We made Stax even better

New: We added ten services in Ghana and Ethiopia, made it easier to quickly retry failed transactions and see exactly what happened in the USSD session after you transact. We also made it possible to access Money Mapper by signing in to your Google account.

Improved: We updated transaction statuses to be more informative, made the permission prompt easier to understand, expanded the balance list after check balance is completed, and expanded the transaction history to now show successful, pending, and failed move money transactions (Request money feature users totally love this). In addition, we fixed the crashes caused by the Zenith Bank Check Balance feature, and we fixed the bug preventing a few people from accessing Money Mapper bounties.

Just in case you have ever wondered why we ask for permission when you download our app, please read this.

Coming Soon: We are working very hard to support multiple accounts within the same bank, fulfill a Stax payment request on any mobile browser, support Amharic language and help you pay more bills.

Money mappers would love this:

Wangu, our senior UX researcher, delved deeper into money mappers this month and reported 46 services added via money mappers across seven countries since May. We have over 154 money mappers on the platform with a $30 average earned per mapper. Learn how to become a money mapper if you are excited about this news.

From this research, we learned so much! To improve our money mapper’s experience, we intend to share money mapper FAQs, share more specific bounty statuses, make it easier to sign in with Google, automate payments, show total earned and bounty history and we are heavily considering a referral and rewards program where money mapper can earn rewards for transacting with friends on Stax.

Forces working together:

Growth is never by mere chance; it is the result of forces working together! The team has been a reflection of this. First, a powerful force — Justin Scherer, our Head of Design, just transitioned out of Hover after two fulfilling years! It was the emotional send-forth ever! If you are reading this, Justin, we love you.

Another powerful force, a fantastic designer — Itunuoluwa Ayanfe, just joined our team. She’ll be handling all brand and marketing designs, and we are feeling pumped about her presence.

Every single one of us is doing the best we can with all our forces working TOGETHER. We feel inspired that Stax has no choice but to grow!

We’re hiring:

We are recruiting for one role this month, to catalyze the growth of financial inclusion in Africa. We’re hiring for:

• Principal Backend Engineer. Read the job description here

Wondering why you need Stax? Watch this:

Miss Techy (Tobi Ayeni) did a fantastic job visualizing Stax like this.

If you can relate to anything Miss Techy said in this video, or you just blatantly like enjoyment and hate stress, then you should definitely download Stax.