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Waya co-founders CEO Dr. David Wachira and CTO Hempstone Maroria are stepping hard on the gas pedal to provide immigrants with a much-needed banking solution tailored to their circumstances.
On Saturday, Seattle residents can hear directly from Wachira and Maroria and sample Waya, a new mobile banking application created by Kenyan immigrants.
The meet and greet event, where the co-founders are expected to unveil how Waya works, is scheduled to take place at 6 P.M. PST at the following address:
Courtyard by Marriott Hotel
31910 Gateway Center Blvd S
Federal Way, WA 98003
To access Waya website copy and https://getwaya.com on your browser of click on the following links to access the site and applications.
“This event will provide an excellent opportunity for us to share our progress at Waya over the past year and discuss our future plans for growth and expansion,” Wachira and Maroria said in their advertisement flyers for the Seattle event.
In the company newsletter, Wachira shares the progress achieved so far. They include news that Waya app is now available in Google Play and Apple App Store, a major milestone that required them to satisfy stringent requirements to gain regulatory approval.
Now they have embarked on the mission to attract customers, estimated to be over 160,000.
To achieve this, Wachira disclosed in the companywide newsletter that Waya had organized several marketing efforts, including sponsoring the 25th Annual Africa Business Conference at Harvard Business School, where they marketed to international students, millennials, and the Gen Z population, and participating in the recently concluded LA Marathon.
Off the gate, Waya, which describes itself as “Banking Built for the Diaspora,” is offering immigrants five essential services.
- Checking accounts
- Virtual and physical payment cards
- Waya to Waya transfers
- Automated Clearing House (ACH) Transfers
- International money transfers.
Wachira, Waya’s Co-Founder and CEO, said he was inspired to start Waya after experiencing banking access hardship when he moved to the US as a student.
According to their research, lack of ready banking access significantly denies immigrants an opportunity to thrive in the US. Waya found that as of 2019, more than 7 million households were unbanked, with 29 percent lacking enough money to meet the minimum balance requirement and another 16 percent lacking trust in banks.
To solve these problems, Waya has adopted a holistic solution that moves beyond remittances to empower its customers, giving them 24-7 access to their money and ease of transferring from their digital wallets without incurring transfer costs similar to those charged when remitting money.
A digital wallet, also known as an e-wallet, is a software application or online service that enables users to store, manage, and make electronic transactions with their payment information. It can be used to make purchases online, in-store, or through mobile devices, and it can also be used to transfer money to other users.
Waya Holistic Solution
To provide more value to their customers, Waya is teaming up with several innovation and fintech powerhouses such as Mastercard, IBM, and Synctera to power its digital wallet.
Synctera is a banking-as-a-service (BAAS) platform that enables Waya to bypass heavily-regulated banking and fintech red tape but remain compliant with regulatory rules and provide banking access to their customer through a network of partners.
Waya’s partnership with Synctera will enable the company to integrate faster within the global banking network. Synctera offers banking and digital wallet support as well as providing personal and comprehensive banking solutions such as debit and credit cards.
“Waya partnered with Synctera, a BAAS platform, to help integrate Waya with Synctera’s APIs which would then connect community banks and Waya,” Wachira said. “The Synctera platform supports Waya’s functionalities with ledgering, transaction processing, Know Your Customer (KYC), fraud management, anti-money laundering, and more.”
Wachira and Maroria have praised Synctera as a perfect solution to push Waya to the next level.
“The Synctera platform had everything we needed to build a banking app that would provide better access to financial services for immigrant communities in the United States,” Maroria said in a Synctera report. “The completeness of their BAAS platform enabled us to build a feature-rich banking app without having to source and integrate with multiple vendors, saving us time and money.”
Wachira echoed his co-founder’s sentiments.
“The support we received from Synctera in building the Waya App was incredible. The team’s agility and hands-on guidance were invaluable in helping us create a banking app that will allow underserved communities to brighten their financial futures,” Wachira said.
A partnership with Mastercard is a major milestone as it opens the world to Waya customers, who can use the card anywhere Mastercard is accepted.
Wachira said partnering with Mastercard through Finicity would provide their customers a better banking experience by tapping into vast network of merchants and banking services.
Finicity is a financial data API and services provider that offers financial data aggregation, verification, and analytics solutions to individuals, businesses, and financial institutions.
Currently, Mastercard operates in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide.
While Synctera and Mastercard have juiced up Waya, IBM got the ball rolling. In October 2019, in their early start-up days, Waya participated in IBM’s Hyper Protect Accelerator Program, an investment-readiness and technical mentorship program, which allowed them to explore ways to sharpen their vision and laid a foundation for the company. Waya impressed IBM and received $125,000 under the program, seed money that helped to make Waya a reality today.
The Waya Journey
Wachira and Maroria co-founded after they discovered they shared an experience of having difficulties opening a bank account when they arrived in the US.
Their story, captured on Synctera’s website, reveals a journey of vision and resilience.
Wachira first identified the banking problem immigrants faced in the US when a local bank in Texas refused to open a bank account because he lacked a social security number (SSN), imperiling his student job stipend. He had to obtain an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) to go around the SSN requirement. But after passing that hurdle, it took Wachira some time to establish credit, a vital financial access tool for survival in the US.
Lack of established credit exposes new immigrants to extra financial burdens to access basic amenities, such as a larger security deposit to rent an apartment.
The experience left a lasting negative impression on Wachira, and he vowed to solve the problem at first by creating an immigrant-focused neobank, an online bank.
Wachira and Maroria first met by chance at a Nairobi restaurant in 2018, where they discovered their shared vision to bridge the gap between financial institutions and financial inclusion for immigrants in the United States.
Wachira, a banker who once worked for the World Bank, and Maroria, a software engineer and entrepreneur, came together and used their expertise to come up with WayaPay, later renamed Waya, to encompass their broad fintech and modern banking service potential.
In a Twitter post, Wachira shared the Waya journey he and Maroria, co-founder, and CTO, and the technical brains behind Waya have traveled to make Waya a reality.
“When Maroria and I began this Waya journey, we had one simple goal: using financial innovation to improve the lives of those who have been left behind by traditional financial institutions,” Wachira tweeted.
But it was not always a bed of roses. Like every start-up, they faced tough decisions, but Wachira said they were honored to take up the challenges.
“The sleepless nights wondering how we would meet payroll or the hours spent looking for talent and financing serve as a reminder that together, we can make a meaningful difference in the lives of underserved individuals and communities and help build a more equitable financial system for all,” Wachira declared in a tweet with thanking Waya’s new partners Synctera, Mastercard and IBM.
Waya’s vision would make it easier for Kenyans in the diaspora to plug into the system whenever they move into the US, saving them from risky banking options at predatory interest rates.
Immigrant Community Outreach
Wachira and Maroria have been joined in their leadership at Waya by Aenoi Chanthavong, the chief commercial and compliance officer and co-founder Renzo Sotomayor.
Wachira has called on the immigrant community to join their mission using three possible ways:
- Become marketing champions by installing Waya App and sharing it with at least ten people.
- Introduce Waya within their community Sacco and immigrant groups
- Provide warm introductions to close circles with investment interests.
“Enjoy banking that understands you,” Wachira said in his message to the Waya customers.
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