Google Impact Challenge

What is your organization's mission statement?

Developing business solutions using new and available technologies

Project Overview

My Project is named…
PEXBANK - Private Exchange Bank. PEXBANK is a P2P Escrow Social Exchange Network
and Direct Exchange Management System for currency exchange.

It will provide economic opportunity to...

Individuals seeking to become independent entrepreneurs via budding business trend in currency
exchange

It will improve lives by...

Ensuring survival of aspiring inexperienced, experienced and new entrepreneurs starting out in
the budding trend of currency exchange business by mitigating scam in social exchange.

The Project is different from existing solutions bcos it…

Existing escrow services are not designed for social exchange negotiations thereby causing our potential
customers to resort to social media and online forums in search for negotiated exchange deals.

If successful, in five years our project will...

Develop to provide services to other countries on our waiting list including Kenya, Indonesia,
Singapore and India.

Describe the geographic area that your project impacts:

Our project has global impact potential especially in countries with growing base of aspiring
entrepreneurs. Trend of social exchange has been witnessed in more than 5 countries.

What have you accomplished to-date?

We have recorded over 1000 users and have fully developed product in Public beta stage

Why did you choose to take it on? Approximately how many people are affected? How does it impact
their lives?
Since the cryptocurrency boom, bitcoin p2p exchange has increased the awareness of direct money
exchange through the web. Now, individuals try to exchange fiats, gift cards & other digital currencies
peer-2-peer. Unfortunately, existing escrow companies are only able to escrow bitcoin as a universal
currency, even at that, no negotiations exist prior to exchange. Because of the persistent demand for
peer to peer non-bitcoin exchange, and no companies have attempted to meet this demand, individuals
take to social media and online forums to search for deals they can further negotiate, but eventually
play into the hands of these scammers losing millions of naira or it’s dollar equivalent.
What other approaches have been tried in the past? What is the insight or innovation that
differentiates your project, and how is it better than what already exists?
Existing escrow companies are only able to escrow bitcoin as a universal currency. Fiats, gift cards and
other digital currencies that pre-existed before cryptocurrencies do not have an escrow platform.
PEXBANK proposes an exchange platform where private exchangers define the terms of their own
exchange by giving them the FLEXIBILITY to set their exchange rates and offers social exchange services
by integrating technology for NEGOTIATION. Our database of users become our source of UNLIMITED
FUNDING SUPPLY. Escrow services provide protection & SECURITY and if we reverse the escrow strategy,
then exchange services can be provided FOR ALL CURRENCY TYPES and similarly, Pexbank’s idea can be
replicated WORLDWIDE!

Why would they pay the cost, if there is one? How will you make sure potential beneficiaries know
about your project?
Nigeria has over 200 million population and over 10% are entrepreneurs. Between 2016-2017,
over 6million lost their jobs and new entrepreneurs who are catching up in this field of budding
currency exchange hope to influence market prices via negotiation to buy cheaper and sell at
reasonable profit margins, thereby engaging in social exchange. With an unemployment rate of
18.8%, this explains why scammers have taken over the scene causing the miserable experience
to aspiring entrepreneurs. The risk has become too high as genuine people convert themselves to
scammers to recover losses, a situation that continues to recycle. So, it's easy to sell the idea and
we reach out to potential users via social media.

Please quantify the potential impact, and explain how you calculated your estimate. Please clearly
identify any assumptions you made and include sources where available
Nigeria population is over 200million. If 5% venturing into currency exchange as entrepreneurs
carries out a daily transaction of $50 per day, this is potentially 10million people with transaction
volume of $500million per day. With unemployed workforce of about 85.1 million people
according to Nigeria National Bureau of Statistics, $500m per day could be the volume saved in
scammed losses.

How will you measure them?

We would measure these metrics via Audit of transaction count on our social exchange portal.

How will you sustain and grow the impact of this work beyond this grant?
We would invest resources in creating awareness via all marketing channels available. We would
initiate affiliate programs to create alternative revenue sources for unemployed individuals as
motivation to foster the widespread awareness of our solution and keep scam at bay as much as
we can. We would employ large volume workforce to aid transaction facilitation and reduce the
number of the unemployed workforce by employing labour. Then, we could go ahead to become
a dedicated bank of currency exchange worldwide

How has your team planned to address them?

1. Operational risk – clients sending funds from unverified sources or hacked bank accounts
which might cause our bank account with a pool other exchangers’ funds to be frozen.
2. Financial Regulatory & Compliance risk – It cannot be overemphasized that Fraud and money
laundering is a potential risk and highly probable issue to face once we gain worldwide traction.
The best solution we have identified so far to help implement cross-border Know Your Customer
(KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliant identity verification for every individual
on every corner of the globe is to integrate the Trulioo GlobalGateway API when we can afford
it. Trulioo GlobalGateway is an online electronic identity verification (eIDV) service developed
for the international market.

Team, Partners and Budget

What makes your core team best suited to tackle this project?
Our team have the technical know-how and financial expertise/knowledge to
accomplish success in what we have created from a budding market trend we have
identified in social exchange. Also, we are players in the field of currency exchange.

Organization-wide, who are your major partners or funders from the last 3 years?
We have never received any funding.

What is the incentive for those organizations to partner with you?

On this project specifically, which partnerships are most critical for your success?
Partnership with full stack developers and financial services companies like VISA , other
payment processing systems.

If selected as a finalist, how would your project utilize the $125,000 in funding?
We have the following plans ahead of us to utilize funding:
# creating portals to launch the same platform in other countries on our “needs it” list.
# establish modus operandi for rendering professional services in this exchange space
# Commission a dollar delivery system for supply of FX services on demand.
# Develop & Establish a protocol for Exchange Managers (individuals who hope to
become self-employed that will rely on Pexbank to engage the populace such as local
businessmen, importers, exporters).
# develop and establish protocols for p2p swap exchange between different currency
types available.
# Create Sustainable social media support channel and marketing plans.
# Develop Telegram trade bots and Android/IOS app that will fuse telegram style chat
with the platform to keep close to 60% of user database online.
# establish protocols to received direct deposits for selected currencies etc

Briefly, how would your goals and project plan change if you were to win the $250,000
prize?
We would further develop our services to acquire other affiliated exchange services and
push the barriers of cross-bother currency exchange via investment in anti-money
laundering services to accomplish our global business plan.

Please explain how you will allocate any profit that your project earns, if it applies.
Profit would be used paying Salaries and bonuses, human capital development, Asset
development, Business penetration and giving back to the community via CSR.

Please include links to up to 3 articles, publications or videos that support your proposal.
(optional)
http://www.nairaland.com/3430558/scam-alert-dont-victim-update,
http://www.nairaland.com/3190496/currency-e-currency-market-deals, https://
web.facebook.com/babuni.islam.39/posts/652456875102625