Kweli

Kweli (Swahili: true, truth) is an AI agent that helps freelancers in emerging markets get paid on PayPal with a complete, verifiable paper trail for every payment. Ready for PayPal in one click.

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Inspiration

I personally lost my PayPal account. I'd been paid by overseas clients for years, then PayPal suspended the account, and sending my ID and other documents didn't bring it back. In June 2026 the same thing happened to many Kenyan freelancers: Kenya is on the FATF grey list, and PayPal froze balances and banned accounts. Reviewers asked for contracts, invoices and proof of address that most freelancers had never kept, because work was agreed on WhatsApp and paid with a "send money" link. They hadn't done anything wrong. They just couldn't prove it.

What it does

Kweli (Swahili for "true") gives every PayPal payment a verifiable paper trail from the start:

  • Agreements: paste a WhatsApp or email thread, and the AI drafts a plain-language agreement that the client accepts through a link, with the time recorded.
  • Invoices: ask the agent to "invoice Acme $800 for the logo," approve it, and it sends a real PayPal invoice tied to that agreement.
  • Proof ledger: each incoming payment is matched to its invoice, agreement and delivered work. Seven clear rules flag any gap and say how to fix it.
  • Compliance Pack: one click builds a PDF that maps every payment to its documents, ready if PayPal asks for information.
  • Dispute defender: when a client opens a dispute, the agent drafts the response from stored evidence and submits it after you approve.

How we built it

  • Backend: FastAPI and Postgres.
  • Frontend: React, Refine and AG Grid.
  • AI: Claude through LangChain, with the official PayPal Agent Toolkit.
  • PayPal APIs: Invoicing, Disputes, Webhooks (with signature verification), Transaction Search and Subscriptions, all in the sandbox.
  • Design rule: the AI drafts, fixed rules decide what counts as proof, and a human approves anything that moves money. Every action goes into a tamper-evident log.

Challenges we ran into

  • PayPal has no public API for account-limitation reviews, so Kweli builds the pack and the user uploads it themselves.
  • Designing the AI so it can never invent or backdate a document, or approve its own actions.
  • Sandbox transaction search data can arrive late, so real-time matching uses webhooks instead.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • A working end-to-end flow in the sandbox: agreement → invoice → payment → proof → pack → dispute.
  • Security built in from day one: verified webhooks, encrypted documents, secrets hidden from logs, and human approval for money actions.

What we learned

  • For freelancers, compliance is a record-keeping problem, not a bad-faith problem.
  • Agents that handle money need hard limits: a person approves the action, and rules check the AI's drafts.

What's next for Kweli

  • A pilot with 20 Kenyan freelancers, measuring how their documentation improves.
  • Moving to production on PayPal and adding M-Pesa withdrawal records to complete the money trail.
  • Partnering with freelance platforms and digital-work programmes, then expanding to Nigeria, Ghana, Pakistan and the Philippines.

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