2023: Thank You for the Happiest Year…

As I write this, I’m listening to Jaymes Young’s hit track “Happiest Year”. You must be under a rock to have never heard the track. I mean, you must have never used Instagram in December — those endless reels with people summarizing their years in one minute, to claim not to have heard the song.

Thank you for the happiest year of my life
Thank you for the happiest year of my life ohh
Thank you for the happiest year of my life, yeah
Thank you for the happiest year of my life
Thank you for the happiest year of my life

Oops! I’m off Instagram at the moment. So this is my own little “reel” of how 2023 went for the one thing I care about the most — Tribapay. Join me on this quick recap.

L-R Jessy (Our Product Manager), Best (Our Designer), Anu (Our CTO and Co-founder), Francis (Our Mobile Engineer).

The year 2023 was a year of growth for us at Tribapay. Our focuses were mainly retaining customers (growing Life Time Value) and building new products. We spent way less on marketing in 2023 compared to 2022, which is interesting.

In 2022, when we launched, we gained lots of users. 2023 was the year to observe churn and validate our business. These people that were coming to Tribapay, are they coming and going? Are they transacting and is the business model correct? So from the start of 2023, we simply didn't spend a lot on marketing.

What we saw was interesting — all our key metrics GREW! At the end of 2022, we were doing about 100k unique transactions. We now do more than 10x that number of unique transactions. We processed well in excess of 1 Million transactions in 2023.

Essentially, people were telling other people about Tribapay — for free! And there were people that came in and relied heavily on us. In fact, we helped people process in excess of N35.7 Billion and we did it safely.

Tribapay Onboarding Screen

We launched in Ghana in 2023. No other app in Nigeria has the length and breadth of the integration we did. We essentially brought Ghana and Nigeria as one country.

Many apps do “send to Ghana”, but the bulk of them do P2P sending within their app, which means the Ghana party must also have their app. For us, we allow direct instant transfers from Tribapay in Nigeria to Mobile Numbers in Ghana. We also allow Tribapay in Ghana directly to any bank in Nigeria.

• A Nigerian visiting Ghana can buy airtime or data in Ghana with Naira directly from Tribapay.
• A Ghanaian can pay for Nigerian DSTV and watch as if he lives in Nigeria. (Nigeria DSTV is regarded to have better stations than Ghana DSTV, they used agents to do this before Tribapay)
• A Nigerian business can send a payment link to a Ghanaian customer. The Ghanaian customer then sends Cedis from their mobile money, but the Nigerian business will get Naira in their bank account.
• A Ghanaian business can send a payment link to a Nigerian customer. The Nigerian customer then sends Naira from their bank account, but the Ghanaian business will get Cedis in their Tribapay (which is linked to their mobile money).
• We integrated in such a way that you can either pay any Mobile Money Telco — Airteltigo, MTN Momo or VodafoneCash or actual Ghana banks like Barclays Bank Ghana, Bank of Africa or Consolidated Bank Ghana.

Now, that is far more comprehensive than what you would see elsewhere.

L-R Jessy (Our Product Manager), Thanau (Our Product Designer), Dolapo (Tribapay Alumni), Me.

We celebrated our 1-year anniversary in July with our team members, friends and stake holders. It was an amazing time to breathe and appreciate the work we had been doing.

Zenith Bank, Nigeria’s leading bank by market capitalization and revenue, recognized us as one of the most innovative startups at their Tech Fair 2023. They gave us a grant of N10m.

But more importantly is the collaboration brewing between us. Expect to hear more about this in 2024.

The Tech Fair was attended by Governor Sanwoolu of Lagos State, as well as Dr. Ebenezer Onyeagwu (CEO of Zenith Bank) and Mohammad Ali bin Rashed Lootah (CEO of Dubai Chamber of Commerce).

Thanks to Zenith Bank for giving us a grant of N10 Million.

Our people at Tribapay were the driving force of everything — we have amazing engineers, designers, product people, customer care, compliance people. They’ve made the job easier and better.

We had 2 major product launches — one in March and the other in October and these people made it happen.

From writing software, to helping customers navigate whatever challenges they were facing, our Tribes men were more than equal to the task.

And of course, to our most important group — our customers. Nothing works without them. For me, they were the real MVPs of 2023. All our work, efforts and activities would have simply been worthless without them.

This is my official thank you to everyone- thank you indeed for the happiest year of our lives.