Stellar Community Seed Fund Finalists: Leaf Global Fintech and Task.io

Founder(s): Nat Robinson, Tori Samples

Use Case: Remittances, Savings

Wallets are one of Stellar’s most effective applications, and for good reason. Leveraging the ability to exchange stablecoins quickly via on/off ramps, low transaction fees, and high speeds, wallets make cross-border payments and remittances more accessible than ever to those who need it.

Based in East Africa, Leaf Global Fintech was built specifically for people with cross-border financial needs, whether they are refugees bringing their money to a new country or cross-border traders who typically get taken advantage of while carrying cash across borders. Unlike mobile money or other domestic wallets, Leaf truly supports its customers so that leaving their country does not mean losing access to their money. With the Leaf wallet, Users can save their money in multiple currencies, enjoy free Leaf-to-Leaf wallet transfers, and pay for goods and services.

What makes Leaf’s wallet especially unique is its accessibility. Leaf is the first on blockchain to design their wallet with USSD technology, so that even those with basic phones are able to access all of their services. Users can use Leaf through a smartphone app, but they can also access the wallet on a basic phone. All they need to do is dial in a shortcode and use numeric inputs to indicate what they want to do on a numbered menu: check balances, send money, deposit, withdraw, and more.

The more users store and transfer value on their wallets, the more offerings Leaf can roll out, including microlending for grassroot entrepreneurs, QR payments, and financial literacy education. Leaf also plans to launch their services in other African countries before expanding to South America and Europe, making it possible for users to transfer value in multiple currencies too.

Leaf recognizes, by expanding their services and collaborating with both traditional financial institutions and ecosystem participants, the value they can deliver to their users will grow dramatically and contribute to true financial inclusion in emerging markets.

Founder(s): Steve Walker, Matt Rickard

Use Case: Payments, Data Collection

When blockchain first emerged, its potential impact in the financial sector was clear, but it turns out that blockchain technology is also well-suited for non-profit use cases. Organizations with social impact missions often have complex daily operations and teams spanning entire geographies. This type of scaling makes it difficult to ensure transparency and accuracy at all levels, especially where money is concerned. With blockchain, one can trace a payment on the network from origin to destination – ideal for when NGOs need to collect donations or send payments to people in the field.

Task.io supports non-profits and social impact organizations in connecting with remote teams, tracking activity, and processing payments between users all on Stellar. They have clients in the US, UK and Asia Pacific and with Stellar’s on-and-off ramps, payment features, and ledger, Task is able to operate across these different regions and allow payments of different assets at fast speeds and low costs.

On Task, organizations can launch initiatives customizable depending on activity type and payments/awards systems. Users can then verify their activity on the Task app and send each other payments or “awards” (either in stablecoins, traded coins, or privately branded tokens with non-financial value) with the embedded Stellar wallet. In turn, organizations can track activity on the Stellar ledger, provide donors proof of how their funds are being used, and implement decision mechanisms by letting the users vote with their tokens.

With a client base of non-profits and education organizations, Task will continue to expand their services by continuing along their future development roadmap and completing integration with Stellar partners such as ClickPesa and Anclap. On top of building out their sales and marketing pipeline and partnering with established institutions in the NGO world such as Blackbaud, Task is set to scale and showcase the true potential of blockchain to the social impact space.

“If Stellar enables people to send money anywhere affordably and quickly, then Task makes sure that money gets into the hands of the right people. Donor transparency plus transaction and admin costs are key issues to be solved in the nonprofit space,” says Steve Walker, CEO & Co-founder of Task.io.

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Voting begins today! Check out all the entries today at https://communityfund.stellar.org.

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