Breaking Barriers: Empowering the Unbanked with Innovative Tech

Did you know that 1.4 billion adults globally are unbanked according to the Word Bank? The majority of this population is concentrated in Africa, followed by South America and Asia. It’s time to change that. As a software engineer and an entrepreneur who has dedicated more than a decade to solving problems for the unbanked and underbanked, I know firsthand the struggles they face. The lack of access to smartphones and the internet is a major hurdle. In my talk, I’ll show you how a simple application can make a big impact on this underserved population. During my talk, I will address the following key points:

1. An introduction to the challenges faced by the unbanked and underbanked in accessing financial services through technology.
2. The significance of the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) protocol in providing financial services to the unbanked and underbanked, and its role in bridging the digital divide.
3. Strategies for building and managing complex applications using the USSD protocol.
4. Techniques for interfacing a mobile application and chatbot with a USSD-based application.
5. A demonstration of my toolkit, which will equip the audience with the necessary tools to begin building USSD-based applications.

Transcript

1. Thank you, RubyConfTH 2023
2. Bernard Banta @Bantab
3. Finplus Group CTO and Co-Founder I work at
4. ARC Chairman and Co-founder rubycommunity.africa
9. Nairobi, Kenya I’m from
13. Breaking Barriers Empowering the Unbanked with Innovative Tech
14. Globally, some 1.4 billion adults remain unbanked.  These people are hardest to reach – and more commonly women, poorer, less educated, and living in rural areas. 
15. Understanding the Challenges • Limited access to banking infrastructure • Low income • Digital illiteracy • High transaction costs • Geographical barriers • Limited connectivity • Informal work
16. What phones do they use; • Most of them use feature phones • Minority of them use low-end smartphones with minimal internet access
18. What can you do with a feature phone?
21. USSD
22. Rails backend server Telecommunication company Feature phone
23. How do you develop a USSD app
24. For a simple app you can use conditional statements Thank you for dialing our short code. Please select an option below. 1. Get more information 2. Support contacts 3. Request demo 4. Sales contacts
25. case user_input when '1' # Send an SMS about more information when '2' # Send an SMS about support contacts when '3' # Log demo request when '4' # Send an SMS about sales contacts else # Display invalid input end
26. How about a complex app?
28. We came up with a Component-Based solution approach
30. We create a USSD tree file in JSON format compatible with the AppNode model structure we saw previously.
31. We generate a tree on the DB based on the JSON file.
32. Class BaseNodeProcesor Controller Class RequestReceiver Class NodeProcessor
34. class NodeProcessor1 < BaseProcessor def process_request # Implement your logic here end end
35. What more can you do with USSD?
36. - Web browser and - Mobile app USSD apps
37. Let’s Zoom out
38. I’d like us to think about a few questions.
39. Do we easily get swayed by new tech tools without fully exploring the full potential of existing ones?
40. What other problems can USSD solve?
41. Are there other real problems affecting millions of people or even billions that can be solved by simple innovative tech?
42. Thank you