Kevin Nyango
TechInAfrica – It has been like a culture in most countries, not to spend the set aside for charitable projects without someone diverting a portion of it to their pockets. It becomes challenging to locate where the money went considering the accounting gurus currently present. That’s why a Seattle startup backed by Bill Gates is working to make the location of money for easier.
Gates in conjunction with Sunlight Payments have made it easier to track the money. The projects piloting was carried out with Sunlight Payment alongside Pathfinder International, a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) located in 19 countries and focuses on women reproductive. They managed to move funds from the Pathfinders office in Massachusetts to organizations and people working on projects in Tanzania and Uganda successfully. After the successful piloting, Sunlight Payments is now on a mission to market the system to charitable organizations globally. The investment details from Bill Gates were not disclosed to the public.
In the past, it was difficult to locate where the money ends up after donors have transferred the money to various organizations as part of the charitable project. The system worsened farther after the recipient had transferred the money to several subcontractors which adds another complication to the whole process.
Sparks who is the CEO of the Sunlight Payments says the whole idea of coming up with the organization was to increase transparency and accountability when transferring money to charitable projects. Sparks and Gates wanted a way which the donors can rest assured that the money will get to where it’s channeled without changing the direction.
The technology works in a way that the donor is required to drop the money into a “project bucket” and then they invite the organization they are working with into the same bucket and give them the go-ahead on where to use the money. The donor will, therefore, be in a position to notice how the money is used after the organization has redirected the money to different subcontractors.
Sparks says that the system has helped to retain transparency and accountability thus saving money due to simplified payments processing. The company was founded by a team of nine people in 2015 and it’s working with a group of payment, fraud detection and distribution system of different businesses. One advantage is that the system needs minimum cell signals. The piloting area that’s Tanzania and Uganda has a cell network of 2G, and the test succeeded.
