Gigentic CheckPay is a mobile-optimized smart contract protocol enabling secure trustless payments for unbanked populations. Built on Celo, it integrates privacy-preserving identity verification to facilitate cross-border commerce, freelance payments, and P2P transactions in emerging markets. The solution reduces transaction failures through blockchain-based escrow with minimal fees.
Our escrow solution addresses the foundational need for trust in digital transactions across Celo's target markets. It enables secure peer-to-peer commerce for everyone with a mobile phone, regardless of their banking status. Our economic model not only ensures project sustainability but directly contributes to Celo's growth as transaction volume increases.
Beyond social impact, our escrow solution will drive significant economic value for the Celo ecosystem. Each escrow transaction temporarily locks value on-chain, creating a growing pool of locked assets that strengthens the ecosystem while facilitating commerce that would otherwise not occur due to trust barriers. This directly contributes to Celo's growth as transaction volume increases.
The Global South desperately needs trusted digital transaction infrastructure, and Celo's unique focus on privacy-preserving identity and accessibility on truly global scale creates the ideal foundation. By leveraging Celo's core value proposition, we're building infrastructure that significantly increases economic activity by making previously risky transactions viable.
Our solution has the potential to unlock new commercial opportunities that particularly benefit SMEs and freelancers in emerging markets.
Cross-border commerce faces systemic trust barriers, with 14% of global transactions failing due to payment discrepancies, rising to 11% failure rates specifically in U.S. merchant cross-border deals. Remittance costs remain prohibitive at 8.9% in sub-Saharan Africa versus 6.8% globally, while 58% of Southeast Asian freelancers report non-payment for digital work. Traditional financial infrastructure excludes 1.7 billion unbanked adults worldwide, including 57% of Africa's population and 820 million in Asia Pacific.
This exclusion perpetuates economic fragmentation - 85% of global freelancers face payment delays, and 44% of African online learners abandon courses due to prepayment risks. Mobile-first solutions become critical when 72% of failed payments stem from manual beneficiary checks, and 45% of adults still use cash for utility bills. Unlike developed markets with established credit systems, 50% of Global South adults lack access to basic financial tools beyond cash transactions, making blockchain's trustless mechanisms essential for participation in digital commerce.
CheckPay addresses the foundational need for trust in digital transactions across Celo's target markets. Based on research from successful models like Truzo in Africa, reliable escrow services can reduce transaction abandonment by up to 62%, potentially unlocking millions in economic activity.
By integrating Celo's Self identity protocol, our escrow service creates a privacy-preserving trust layer that enables secure peer-to-peer commerce for everyone with a mobile phone, regardless of their banking status. We address three key use cases identified in our research:
Freelance Service Protection: Smart contracts that release cUSD payments upon verified milestone completion, protecting both clients and service providers.
Peer-to-Peer Asset Transfers: Secure escrow for person-to-person transactions with built-in dispute resolution mechanisms.
Cross-Border Trade Facilitation: Enabling SMEs to conduct international business with reduced counterparty risk.
After having successfully built our platform MVP, we now want to move forward by integrating a fully operational privacy-preserving identity layer which is essential for improving trust in the escrow transactions we want to enable. Celo's Self protocol provides exactly this critical infrastructure, making it the ideal ecosystem for our next phase of development.
CheckPay generates revenue through a 1% platform fee on all escrow transactions, dispute resolution fees, and premium services including third-party marketplace integrations and whitelabel solutions, while remaining 5-10x cheaper than traditional escrow services.
Want to raise from VCs
Global
20k
