WestToEast

Swap summary
Swap list

Inspiration

Here are some figures:

Countries in Africa: 54
Currencies : 42
Mobile Money users : ~600–800 million
Mobile money services: ~187

How can we connect all these currencies and mobile money services through the Lightning network?

What it does

WestToEast is a new feature that will be added to Banxaas (https://banxaas.com) and that will allow a Alice, from West Africa (Senegal, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Guinea), to send its local currency (XOF, XAF, GNF) using its mobile money wallet (ex: Wave, OM, MTN...), while Bob, in Kenya, will receive, KES in its Mpesa wallet.

How we built it

We have used a new feature developed by Tando (https://tando.me) that leverage LNURL. Case study: XOF > KES

Alice request to send 150 KES
Banxaas will ask for a phone number
Banxaas queries Tando to get BTC/KES quote from Tando, through LNURL
Banxaas compute XOF/KES and shows XOF amount required for the swap to Alice.
Alice pay XOF amount through her senegalese mobile money wallet
After confirmation, Banxaas send SATS to Tando through the lightning network
Tando convert SATS to KES
Bob receives KES to his Mpesa wallet from Tando

Challenges we ran into

Understanding of the LNURL spec
Understanding of Tando process
XOF > Sats > KES conversion rates

Accomplishments that we're proud of

In less than 30s, a user in Kenya can receive KES in its Mpesa wallet from 3 different currencies (XOF, XAF, GNF) and 10 different mobile money wallets