Okezue Bell

As a person of color and a Nigerian, I’ve seen the devastating effects that the racial hegemony in banking and finance can have on communities. I’ve seen Black-owned businesses crash, families denied essential loans and purchases, and entire unbanked neighborhoods fall into poverty. Living in the US, I see the negative effects that poverty has on minority groups on my TV every morning, from discriminatory acts, to police brutality to institutionalized racism. I quickly realized that financial access was the root cause underlying this marginalization. This led me to create Fidutam, and working in the communities I appreciate has made me realize I want to pursue this project for the rest of my life. 

Fidutam is catered to the 2.5 billion people across the world in need of bank accounts, particularly minorities. Given the new global socioeconomic landscape as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the share of the world’s workers living in extreme poverty rose to 6.9% for the first time in two decades. According to the UN’s 2022 Poverty Report, the number of asset limited, income constrained, but employed individuals is continuing to rise, making solutions like Fidutam of paramount importance. The ever-expanding exclusion of low-income individuals from the economic benefits and support that having a bank account entails will drive the global poor further into poverty. 

Without a bank account, cashing checks, paying bills, and raising personal capital becomes extremely difficult, and almost all financial interactions become riskier and more expensive. They also have no financial support or backing, leaving them and their money vulnerable. It is because of this that the unbanked population represents a significant portion of the global poor: they come from the lowest-income and resource-underserved communities, in which over 93% of individuals are economically and financially limited. 

The root cause of unbanking is identification and access. In 2021, 11 in 12 unbanked individuals cited a lack of adequate ID–an SSN, taxpayer or government-issued photo ID, or proof of address–or proximity as the primary reason for not having a bank account. A follow-up study over 2 years in Nigeria, China, and Pakistan’s low-infrastructure communities confirmed this data.  However, current solutions attempt to offer low-cost financial planning and prepaid debit cards, ignoring the causal factors of the unbanking issue. These solutions have had little traction among the unbanked. With a lack of effective solutions, the unbanking crisis and its resulting poverty do not persist globally. 

Fidutam is a cost-free decentralized application that enables financially underserved communities to successfully open bank accounts. The application is a microlending platform that is hosted through instant messaging and made available to users via a SIM card. Users participate in registration at economic development ministry centers, churches, and other Fidutam-partnered community checkpoints, who help with SIM card distribution, account set-up, and fund distribution. 

After having the SIM card installed (takes under 2 minutes per person for a 2G phone) and texting the Fidutam chatbot on WhatsApp or WeChat, users are instructed to take a selfie image. By pinging the phone’s satellite coordinates, the user's location is also stored. They then manually enter their full name and other personal information, if known. These three data are converted into a digital signature on the blockchain. This blockchain-based ID supplants the copious amount of ID requirements by banks that exclude immigrants, POCs, etc. from opening accounts. Each signature has a public identifier, which is visible on the public blockchain server, and a private identifier, which contains all the information of the user and the bank account identification. Storing accounts on the public results in each ID costing only one-third of a cent. 

My background spans research, entrepreneurship, and advocacy. This year, I was named a Research Science Institute (RSI) Scholar, which is the most prestigious pre-collegiate research distinction in the world, and have been conducting research at Harvard-MIT for several years. I also released a cryptotoken on the Ethereum MainNet called OkezCoin. As a STEM promoter and advocate, my workshops, mentorship, and innovation sessions have reached over 60,000 youth and professionals. With my experience both in the technology and community organizing sectors, I am well-equipped to lead, build, and implement Fidutam. 

Since launching Fidutam in 2020, I have assembled a support and advisory team of 24. This group includes 11 on-ground, low-income, and unbanked individuals able to share their firsthand perspectives, 7 research and development advisors from Consensys, IBM, and more, and 6 business advisors from Capital One, Wells Fargo, OPay, and more. With our business advisors, in particular, we are developing working partnerships with the companies that they represent. 

Fidutam has also received international recognition, including winning $150,000 in awards, and receiving honors from the NASDAQ and NASDAQ Center for Entrepreneurship. 

Fidutam has already begun engaging with its audience of interest (unbanked individuals, especially women, minorities, and immigrants). In March 2022, we hosted a virtual kickoff call with 103 low-income and unbanked families from Chicago, IL, Allentown, PA, and the Bronx, NY to provide feedback on our early prototype. The demographic breakdown of our mini-pilot users is as follows: 96 families of color, 22 female users, 51 immigrant users (note that these demographics overlap).  

We supplied over 200 banking IDs with our application via WhatsApp for four weeks. Following the tests, we hosted feedback sessions across multiple days, in which we received feedback regarding the application and product design/deployment from each user. One of our users used the micro-capital they received from Fidutam to start up a small e-commerce store that they grew to make $5,000 in profit. 

As we are now preparing our main pilot in Nigeria, we have sent a written proposal to the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Finance. In the report, we detail our deployment strategies over a 5-year span. We have also begun working with on-ground nonprofits and government economic development officers on the city level, starting with Enugu and Jigawa. 

We have also inspired our corporate partners to adopt Fidutam's solution and mobilize youth to encourage financial equity amongst marginalized communities.