Wala — The Future of Finance [Dala Token sale Review]

Even in this era of technology, billions of people are unbanked and are not able to afford financial services. Banks and banking system have proven themselves less effective as they have failed to provide basic financial services to most of the people in developing countries. For those, who can access these services, the costs are so high that they opt for cash because of financial services experience and expenses.

Wala, a FinTech company is filling this gap of financial inclusion by making basic banking free and by making all financial services available through a customer’s phone. It gives the users a digital financial platform built on Ethereum Blockchain, that provides all of the financial and transactional services as per their needs.

Dala is a new utility crypto-token, issued by Dala Corporation, which will help Wala providing completely free and borderless financial system. This token will be used to incentivize and reward the platform users for various financial behaviors, thereby increasing the user community.

Wala has created the world’s first borderless, rewards driven, zero fee financial platform that will be powered by the Dala utility token. Through Dala, Wala makes use of the best of blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and tokenization to start a financial revolution for the next 3.5 billion consumers.

Concept (4.2/5)

Wala and Dala together are providing a solution to unbanked consumers in emerging markets. Most of the users remain outside of the financial due to lack of an effective financial infrastructure and high fees for using financial services. Therefore, Wala is providing a platform to these users where they will be able to sign up for various financial services. It provides access to transactional banking, remittances, loans and insurance, working with specialist providers to offer a full suite of financial services.

Dala utility token is a general-purpose ERC-20 crypto-token which will be used to incentivize these users for making positive contribution to the platform. Users will be able to transfer Dala, redeem Dala for other value-added services, and transact with thousands of merchants. Consumers will be able to engage in the Dala ecosystem by making transfers using their own token wallets, via the Wala Financial Platform, or through other applications built using the Dala API.

This way, Dala token and the Wala Financial Platform together will enable free and accessible financial services.

Team (3.9/5)

The minds behind this concept are Tricia Martinez (Founder & CEO), Samer Saab (Founder & CPO) and Ross McEwan (CTO). Tricia founded two companies and devoted her time to socially innovative initiatives in areas including microfinance, economic development, and women’s empowerment. Her previous work ranges from cash transfer solutions in Sub-Saharan Africa to the development of an investment fund for underserved markets.

Samer is an Engineer with expertise in product development, analytics, and process excellence. He is experienced in consulting to large corporations across a flurry of functions including strategy, product development, process improvement, and incentive compensation. Ross is the CTO of the company with 17 years of experience in building software solutions across a range of industries like Retail and technologies.

The team is young and getting larger with branding in all the right areas.

Competition (4.0/5)

The biggest competitors of Wala are Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) which deliver large payment networks. These telecom companies operate on a fee-based model similar to banks and provide mobile services to emerging market consumers. Though they are doing a better job than banks in providing financial services to people, but the fees sometimes could be so high that it won’t be possible for everyone to make use of the financial services. In addition to higher fees, MNOs operate within closed networks which limit cross-border and cross-network transactions.

Another biggest competitor Wala is facing is cash since the majority of emerging market consumers still prefer it. To store cash, users don’t have to go through s long procedure, no transaction fees, no delays, more convenient and easier to understand. But they fail to understand that there are various indirect costs involved which make cash another expensive method of transacting.

Wala is the only company that can provide ZERO-FEE banking. Wala and Dala are tackling limitations of the above competitors by providing a platform for free and accessible financial services. However, as a platform, Wala would still be bound by the geographical limits imposed by the networks and licenses of specific partner providers.

Wala Financial Platform has already grown its financial services community to one million consumers in over 100 countries, and recently secured equity investment from Newtown Partners, the venture capital firm founded by Llew Claasen and Vinny Lingham. This will help Wala to take over its competitors and fulfill the needs of its consumers.

To sum up:

Wala has a fantastic growing user base with over 1 million users. They have plans to expand throughout Africa in the coming years to markets including Nigeria, Uganda, Ghana, Mozambique, Egypt, and many more. We will need to see how much time they take to build relationships with regulators and to get them on their side and how they take over banks and reach all the underbanked people.

Dala Token sale is live from 1st Dec 6 PM UTC to 11th Dec 6 PM UTC.

For more info on the token sale, click here.