Money requests
A request that arrives as a notification the other person can approve with a fingerprint, instead of a message they have to act on from memory.
Anyone owed money by someone they know: landlords, tutors, saccos, friends splitting a bill, small suppliers.
Switched on for this deployment.
The problem
Asking for money by message is socially expensive and easy to ignore. You send a number, they say they will do it later, and later never has a reminder attached to it.
How it works
- Choose who you are asking, the amount and the reason.
- They receive a notification with your name, the amount and the reason, and a single approve button.
- Approving takes a fingerprint or a PIN; the money moves on the ledger in one posting.
- Until they approve, the request sits in their app where they can see it, and in yours where you can cancel it.
What you can check
Facts about the running platform rather than adjectives. Each one is visible in the product, the API reference or the ledger.
- A request is never a debit: nothing moves until the other side approves it with their own credential.
- Both sides see the same record with the same status, so there is no argument about whether it was sent.
- A request can be cancelled by the person who sent it, and a cancelled request cannot be approved afterwards.
- The reason travels with the request and lands on both statements.
What it costs
Asking is free. The transfer that results carries the ordinary rate for a transfer between accounts, shown before approval.
Questions
Can somebody take money from my account by sending a request?
No. A request is an ask, not a debit. Nothing leaves your account until you approve it with your own fingerprint or PIN, and you can refuse it.
What if they ignore it?
It stays in their app as an open request they can see every time they open it, which is considerably harder to forget than a message that has scrolled away.
Can I cancel one I sent by mistake?
Yes, and once cancelled it cannot be approved. Both of you see that it was cancelled and when.
Read next
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