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If you’ve ever set savings targets for yourself, you’ll know that they can be tough to reach. A lot of the time, you fall too far behind your goal to very early on, and fail to attain it in the end. The whole journey might just be about paying off debts and racking up new ones.

This irritating situation is what J.R. Kanu set out to deal with when he launched REACH, a savings platform, in 2016. The platform helps Nigerians get honest with their savings habits with tools that show them how they’ve been spending, and opportunities to improve their financial savvy. 

There’s an extra incentive to save in the Nigerian setting, where payments for housing, education, and basic amenities are usually made upfront. Kanu was exposed to the gap between this requirement and Nigerians’ ability to meet their financial obligations while he was working at one of the country’s large ecommerce companies.

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REACH, the solution he developed, is accessible via its mobile app, downloadable from the Google Play Store. The tool allows its users track their savings and spending manually and automatically so that they are able to tell what things are adding to, and depleting their reserves. They can enter information about their daily financial transactions, and receive SMS notifications about how close (or far away) these transactions bring them to their financial goals.

There’s also a budgeting tool which can be used to set savings, investment, and spending plans for the week, month, and year. This section enables the user to easily compare their savings with what they have spent within a specific period, and see whether they are keeping within their target for that period.

Loans can be applied for and received on the platform as well. This feature not only helps people with a quick plug for their funding gaps; it also gives them the chance to build a credit record that they can refer to for future loan requests.

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The REACH app provides some insight into what categories or vendors are getting a greater share of consumers’ money. This is crucial information for anyone who wants to get detailed with their planning for their next budgeting period.

Many Nigerian savers have some experience with cooperative societies and other communal saving systems; REACH tries to replicate this experience on its platform with the ‘My Community’ page. It’s a section that lets users send money from their accounts to anyone they know who uses the app, and also receive money from those people. They can also invite their friends to join them on the app and begin a community of savers on it.

Featured image source: Techbooky

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This article was first published on 30th October 2019

ikenna-nwachukwu

Ikenna Nwachukwu holds a bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He loves to look at the world through multiple lenses- economic, political, religious and philosophical- and to write about what he observes in a witty, yet reflective style.

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