Abeg is a fintech app that is developed by Abeg Technologies. The company was co-founded by Muheez Akanni, Michael Okoh and Dare Adekoya in 2019. The app was launched in September and is already generating a buzz on social media for its unique approach to solving fintech problems.
Due to the severe economic situation in Nigeria and stringent measures required to obtain microloans in financial institutions, friends and families have become major financiers of small endeavours. Therefore, asking people for money is pretty very common and oftentimes, unavoidable.
For example, Tomi, a university student, wants to ask his friend for N2,500 to augment what he has and get a book he needs but does not want the stress of having to send bank details or going through long conversations. Essentially, he and many others want to be able to beg for money as well as send money to people in a convenient way.
Therefore, the problem which the Abeg app aims to solve is not that of being able to send money from one person to another as there are quite a number of fintech solutions that have made it possible to do that.
The idea is to make it easy and possible for people to send requests to others for money and receive it in a structured context, like a fintech app.
For this review, I downloaded version 1.1 of the app and examined it based on the services it renders and its ease of use.
What you can do with the Abeg app
The major services on the app are sending and receiving money. Once you have an account and your BVN has been verified with your phone number, the system scans through your contacts to identify those who have installed the app on their phones.
You can send a request to anyone from the Abeg users in your contact list for money or type in the username of anyone and your request will be sent to them.
To ask for money, you do not need to add your bank details or send them with the request. The primary requirement is your phone number which must be linked to the BVN you registered with.
You can either spend the money within the app by sending it to someone else or by withdrawing it into your bank account in which case you would have to link your bank account to your Abeg account.
Sending money to other users requires that you fund your account wallet and know the person’s username.
I tried out the feature and sent a request to one of my friends for money to buy some ColdStone ice cream. The request process was both simple and intuitive.
Besides sending and receiving money within your own community, a forthcoming functionality is the ‘ajo’ or savings which allows people to save together and cash out one after the other.
How did the app perform?
In terms of quality of service, the app has carved out space for itself by making it easy to ask for money from people within your circle.
Considering it was developed with school students as the primary target audience, the familiar and simplistic language used in the app makes it easy to understand and navigate, even at the first use.
Alternatives to the Abeg app
To send and borrow money, there are other fintech platforms like Carbon and Paga with more users in the space. The help-giving/getting and crowdfunding features of the Abeg App, however, sets it apart from the others for now.
The app presently has some negative feedback on the Playstore. The most notable is that the verification codes needed to set up an account on the app was sent through a phone call.
The other notable issue from the complaints was that the automated voice function does not dictate the code clearly enough for users to grasp and input. Yet, that was the only way to obtain it. I hope these are fixed in subsequent updates.
I checked out for that while using the app and had the same problem. However, the code was also sent as a text message and I was able to use this alternative means instead. The provision of an alternative shows that the app developers listened to the users and updated the functions to give a good user experience.
If you want a user-friendly app that can help you transfer money in a simpler way then you should try out the app.
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