Umoja Labs
Umoja labs provides crypto payment infrastructure for informal markets.
Website: https://umoja.money/
HQ: Lewes, Delaware, United States
Active Markets: Global
Problem Addressed
Legacy payment rails can be expensive to use for senders and receivers, and may take between 24-72 hours to complete, making them inaccessible or ineffective for certain communities. Blockchain and cryptocurrency has introduced significant improvements to these processes, but to fully take advantage of the benefits projects need seamless on/off ramps for users to access local currencies.
Project Description
Umoja Labs is a multi-faceted organization delivering projects focused on financial inclusion and the development of emerging markets, to empower underserved communities and businesses through payment infrastructure. Key initiatives include: Umoja Pay is a crypto payments platform and digital wallet with feature-phone, card, and smartphone compatibility. Through Umoja’s Project Unblocked Cash, Umoja’s payments suite and digital wallet tools seek to increase efficiency, remove intermediaries, reduce costs, and provide real-time transparency in CVA humanitarian aid provisioning. Umoja Protocol is the project’s decentralized (DeFi) credit marketplace which crowdsources debt capital and collateral from global investors to finance emerging market MSMEs. Umoja identifies collateralization of real-world assets (like treasury and institutional bonds), crowdsourced and rentable loan collateral, and multicurrency loan denomination as a means to differentiate themselves and to increase stability in DeFi lending. By incorporating the concept of “lending groups'' and “social credit”, the Umoja protocol creates a way for both retail and MSME borrowers to access affordable financing and establish creditworthiness by borrowing in groups. The Umoja Money API is a local KYC compliant on/off payment ramp, facilitating the buying and selling of crypto in any app, website, or web plugin for emerging market transactions.
Business Data
Status: Active
Constituency Served: Underbanked, historically excluded groups, NGOs, African diaspora community, MSMEs
Networks: Avalanche, Celo, Circle, Ethereum
Known Investors: Coinbase Ventures; Celo (which is funded by a16z, Coinbase, Electric Capital); 500 Global; Mercy Corps Ventures; Avalanche; Untapped Capital; K-Street Capital; Norrsken VC
Progress to date
With Umoja’s Project UnBlocked Cash cash and voucher humanitarian project, they were able to lower costs of bank transfers from Australia from $20AUD to less than 10 cents on average with less or even no additional intermediaries. Direct donations were made to the program, with the flow of funds visible in real time and increased onboarding speeds of recipients and donors. Umoja participated in a pilot with Hope for Haiti and the Celo Foundation in 2022, facilitating the transfer of cash-based assistance for mothers in their community nutrition program. Umoja has established partnerships with Visa, Flutterwave, Nium, Wise, Airtm, and Beyonic to facilitate global payment rails. High profile customers include MetaMask, Coinbase Giving, and Care International.
Business Model
Umoja Labs generates revenue through transaction fees and service subscriptions.
Traction
Umoja Pay is used in six countries, by four major NGO partners, and over 10,000 individual wallet holders, and has facilitated over $3 million in transaction volume. The project’s Money API has served over 1000 users, over $150,000 in transaction volume, in more than 5 countries, and through 5 payment channels. Umoja Protocol’s launch of their asset hedging feature in early 2024 has been described by media outlets as “groundbreaking,” placing them “at the forefront of risk management in the DeFi sector.” Their customizable hedging funds and services are described as reducing fees by up to 80% from traditional approaches and collateral requirements 10x lower.