How cashless policy pushed me to innovate offline payments tech — Gbadebo

A Nigerian innovator, Temitayo Gbadebo, has revealed that the cashless policy introduced in 2023 forced him to develop an innovative approach to mobile app offline payments using Short Lived Distributed Ledger Technology (SLDLT) and Short Message Service (SMS) technology.

According to him, the discovery is an innovative solution for enabling seamless offline transactions to pay for goods and services after he experienced an embarrassing moment with his family.

“In the year 2021, I literally almost got embarrassed with a friend. We took our children out for ice cream, while the ice cream was served and the children were already digging it, when it was time to pay, we faced challenge with card payment, internet data in that area as at that time was very poor, couldn’t be used for transfer of payment, we didn’t have cash with us, ATM is not anywhere close as well.

“After so many tries with the card payment, it eventually went through. While we were there, I thought to myself, how I wish there could be a way to pay with our internet or USSD, by just tapping the vendors phone/pos.

“I however didn’t pursue the idea at that time, but when cashless happened to Nigeria in January 2023, that was when I felt the need to push this idea forward.

“This innovative solution eliminates the need for Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) and any form of data transport to the financial institution’s server before a transaction is completed. It ensures that payments are finalized without relying on data transport to the financial institution,” he said.

While highlighting the challenges posed by the limited internet access in the country which impedes financial transactions on mobile apps, users can transact using this technology in two ways which are person-to-person and via transport over an SMS line.

“The person-to-person transactions utilize technologies such as NFC, Bluetooth, or Wifi Direct, along with Short Lived Distributed Ledger Technology (SLDLT) for updating transaction history. The transport over SMS line employs a highly efficient compression technology for data exchange,” he noted.