Meet Xend, a Fintech Startup that Lets You Transfer Money at No Charge

Startups in Nigeria have been on the rise over the past few years. These startups are attempting to fix urgent issues across the continent, especially in finance.

Xend is one of them, a fintech startup that allows you carry out basic financial transactions from your phone both online and offline.

Founded this year, by Chima Abafor, Chibuike Aguene and Ugochukwu Aronu, Xend looks to help users send and receive money, and pay their bills.

These basic transactions can be carried out by users once they register and set up an account using their phone numbers. This is becoming the trend for most fintech platforms.

It allows for financial inclusion – bringing the unbanked and underbanked individuals on board to digital financial transctions.

Once registered via any of its online mediums – Android, iOS and the Web – users will need to fund their Xend wallets to carry out transactions. And with the phone number registration and necessary funds in place, users can carry out most of the transactions on the platform.

This includes the transfer of funds from one Xend account to the other at no charge, recharge of airtime/data, and payment of utility bills.

Xend also has over 100 businesses listed that you can use the platform to pay bills for their services. But these transactions are limited to not more than N10,000 per day if a user’s account is unverified.

Beyond the transfer limit, users will also not be able to carry out a transaction like transfer of funds to banks if the account is not verified.

To verify an account, users will need to supply some necessary documents such as picture for the profile, photograph of a valid ID card, bank details (BVN, Debit card details and bank name account).

Once verified, users can now carry out unlimited transactions from their accounts as well as transfer funds to bank accounts which attracts the normal bank charge.

As an edge over other payment platforms, Xend also lets users carry out some major transactions offline.

This is done through text messages. Users can make a transfer, confirm a transaction and check their account balance.

So far, Xend only operates in Nigeria but it has not ruled out expansion to other countries. However, Xend might want to consider removing some of its verification requirements especially that of the Valid ID card so it can appeal to a wider audience.

Despite being less than a year, the startup has gained some massive traction over the last few months. Although no information has exists about its number of user or amount processed so far, the startup says it’s been a positive ride since launch with lots of lessons learnt.

Also, it was one of the graduates of the season 2 of Binance Labs incubation program, receiving mentoring and $120,000 in equity funding from Binance Labs. It was selected to participate in the 4th class Google Launchpad Africa Accelerator alongside 3 other Nigerian startups.