How Sendcash actually works 💸

Tl:dr — We don’t accept dollars, just Bitcoin.

We’ve gotten a lot of different reactions to Sendcash since we launched and while there has been a lot of positive and supportive reception, we thought it would be good to address the questions around how Sendcash actually works.

If you aren’t already familiar with Sendcash, you should read our announcement article about what it is: a platform that allows you to receive/send money to Nigeria from anywhere in the world using Bitcoin.

Receiving money using Bitcoin isn’t a novel idea as it is something that a lot of people already do. Many freelancers in Nigeria use BuyCoins and other cryptocurrency exchanges to receive payments for their work in Bitcoin. Others use it to send money to family back home. What Sendcash does is to make the existing process much easier and more accessible.

The graphic below shows how people currently send money using Bitcoin and as you can see, it requires a lot of moving parts and trust from all the parties involved. If like most people, you’re unfamiliar with crypto, this process could seem very daunting.

Clunky peer-to-peer process

Another method that people use, is selling through an instant exchange like BuyCoins. Although this is much simpler, it is still somewhat stressful for someone who is unfamiliar with Bitcoin. (Keep reading, we’ve got you 😉).

A slightly less clunky process with a crypto exchange

This was why we launched Sendcash. We wanted to make this process as simple and accessible as possible to everyone.

Easy process with Sendcash

We’re able to do this because:

1. We have an active cryptocurrency exchange (BuyCoins) where people already buy & sell well over $200,000 worth of Bitcoin daily in Naira.
2. Platforms like Cash App and Coinbase where people can easily buy Bitcoin in their local currency exist.

Here’s what happens under the hood 🛠

When you visit sendcash.africa and input a bank account, we assign a Bitcoin wallet address to that account. The sender may now send Bitcoin to that address.

Once the sender’s transaction is confirmed, we then sell off the Bitcoin (remember, we have a lot of trading activity BuyCoins that we can tap into) and deposit the Naira from the sale into the recipient's bank account.

We do all this programmatically using our API and deposit the Naira into the recipient's bank account through our payment partner, Paystack.

The entire process often takes less than 5 minutes 😉 and you can go about your business knowing that you just received money from outside the country without any stress.

In summary, this happens without BuyCoins or Sendcash receiving dollars (or any other foreign currency) from users.

If you’d like to know more about Sendcash, please visit the website, check out our support articles, or reach out to us at sendcash@buycoins.africa. If you’ve used Sendcash and you would like to share some feedback, please fill this form.

If you haven’t, you can start with Sendcash here:

Sendcash