Stellar-Tanzania/stellar-pay

Making Digital Payments Better in East Africa Using Stellar # Making Digital Payments Better in East Africa Using Stellar 🚀 ## What's the Problem We're Solving? ❓ Right now in East Africa, people mainly use mobile money services like M-Pesa to send and receive money. While these services are popular, they have two big problems: 1. High fees when sending money or withdrawing cash 2. Expensive transaction costs, especially for small payments ## Our Solution 💡 We want to create a new payment system using Stellar blockchain that works like M-Pesa but with much lower fees. Here's how it will work: ### For Regular Users 👥 * Works like Venmo/M-Pesa: Users can easily send money to friends and family * Extremely tiny fees (about 0.016 TZS per transaction!) compared to M-Pesa's high charges * Send any amount to anyone instantly using their phone * They can pay for things at shops using QR codes * All amounts will show in Tanzanian Shillings / Local Shillings (even though Stellar runs in the background) * Perfect for small payments (even as low as 100 TZS!) - something that's too expensive to do with mobile money because of their high fees * No worrying about high fees when sending money to friends ### For Agents (Like M-Pesa Agents) 🏪 * Agents help people convert cash to Stellar and Stellar to cash * They have two ways to set their prices: 1. Use a price factor (like 1.5x) that automatically adjusts with Stellar's market price 2. Set their own buying/selling prices like on P2P exchanges * The app ensures all prices stay within safe limits to protect customers * Agents compete with each other to offer the best rates * Each agent gets a special ID to prevent fraud * They can operate from their existing shops ### Backup Plan: Virtual Agents 💻 * If users can't find a physical agent, they can use virtual agents * Virtual agents can send money through M-Pesa or bank transfers * While useful at first, virtual agents will become less important over time because: - They require extra steps (waiting for mobile money transfers) - They inv …