How Trakka is redefining personal finance
‘Trakka is a financial tool that helps individuals control all their expenses, savings, and budgets all in one app’.
What does personal finance mean to you? It encompasses all activities involved in financial management and the planning of one’s finances. Simply put, it covers 5 areas that shape an individual’s or household’s financial life. As people, we’re always making financial transactions, but sometimes we don’t take note of how we spend and what we spend on the most — or, even worse, we may have multiple accounts, which makes tracking transactions even harder.
For this article, we spoke with a promising 19-year-old Gen Z founder who sought to tackle a problem that has been in dire need of a solution.
It started in 2021 while going through his alerts from several accounts. A thought came to Oluwatimilehin as he realised he had been spending so much money and wanted to have a detailed account of his transactions. He then decided to go online and search for financial management apps that would allow him to track his expenses across his accounts, but most of those apps were internationally structured for foreign accounts; at that time there was only one local app that could help Timilehin track his expenses automatically. However, after using the app for some time, he still felt there was more that had to be done, so he decided to build his own.
During his call with our representative, Timilehin describes himself as a problem solver. He had immediately reached out to his best friend, Rasheed, who was sold by the idea, and the duo then brainstormed ideas together and decided to start a company called Finstaq. “The idea by Finstaq was to build financial tools and services that solve money management issues for companies and individuals”, Timilehin said. In 2022 the two friends rolled out their first product, “Trakka”, an all-in-one financial tool designed to help individuals manage their finances.
Now the question is: “Why Trakka and what problems forced its founders to create such a platform?
Every Nigerian bank account is tied to a BVN. In a NIBSS report as of 10th April 2022, more than 54 million Nigerians are reported to have a registered BVN. The report also shows that there are more than 133.5m active bank accounts.
Using the above data, we can estimate that the ratio of bank accounts to BVN holders is 1:3, meaning each BVN holder has three accounts on average. Tracking costs between these accounts became a complicated and stressful task, so Timilehin saw an opportunity and decided to seize it.
Building Trakka 🚧
Being skillful in financial management is necessary in this digital age, where Gen Zs and Millennial's who spend without any sort of discipline makes you wonder how they manage to keep themselves afloat.
rakka was built from the pain point of its founder and was designed with the end-user in mind. With this fintech solution, you don’t have to worry about the struggle of tracking your expenses, sticking to your budget, and planning your savings. Luckily, Timilehin was able to convince a few people he knew had the skill set to build what he imagined; all he needed was to sell forth the idea and vision he had for the product. Today, the Trakka team is made of 7 members. Building a product that solves a need requires some exceptional skill set. Timilehin and his team have been able to deliver an easy-to-use interface that allows any individual to navigate the app seamlessly.
It took about two months to build the MVP, and by February 2022, it launched its beta phase, which saw about 1000 people on its waiting list. On the 18th of May 2022, the Trakka app went live. It received wild social media traction from several influencers who were proud of the work Timilehin and his team had put in. Since its launch, the app has recorded 2000+ downloads, and Timilehin says over 20,000+ transactions have been processed on the platform.
How does it work?
Trakka is integrated with Mono’s API, which allows it to cross-reference data of several bank account holders, ensuring the privacy of user data. The onboarding process is easy and requires certain details from new users, such as name, email address, and password. The company plans to add extra onboarding security to allow users to sign up on the platform easily. After you sign up as a user, you’re allowed to sync one of your bank accounts to the platform. A few minutes are taken to conduct proper verification, and you’ll be all set to go. To add more accounts, Trakka charges a small fee of $1.50 (N 500), as it plans to serve all income classes.
Trakka comes with exciting features that give users updates on what’s happening financially.
It provides users with the capability to sync and manage multiple financial accounts on its platform. So you can manage your Zenith, UBA, and Piggyvest accounts, as well as monitor each transaction on them — all from one place.
Track expenses on the app using AI-powered categorization and insights. Its ‘smart categorization’ feature makes it easier to organise expenses. It takes the stress of having to manually categorise your daily transactions. The feature also allows the user to customize categories and input the transactions under them.
Creating custom-tailored budgets to regulate spending, one of Trakka’s main goals is to create a super budgeting system that fits all income classes. It has an inbuilt auditing tool that updates in real-time on how you spend. Say you have a budget of ₦5,000 for food in a week, it records all your transactions on food and lets you know whether you’re going overboard with your spending. With custom budgets, users can live a lifestyle that is within their financial power.
Recently, it rolled out a new feature called ‘Manual Transactions’. Remember those little expenses you make that you say do not affect you? Well, now Trakka’s in-app feature allows users to manually enter expenses into their budget so every kobo is accounted for, regardless of how it is spent.
Trakking the future 🚀
Building a startup is not easy. It requires lots of focus and teamwork to ensure you’re providing the best products that meet the needs of people. This hasn’t reduced the consistency these young folks are putting into their work. The founder says “balancing school and work hasn’t been easy, regardless, Education hasn’t impeded the success of Trakka and vice versa”.
The market is still ripe for the fintech application and the Trakka team continues to prove beyond reasonable doubt that any problem can be solved with just the right amount of resources. In terms of growth, Timilehin plans to grow user downloads to 5,000 and process more transactions within Trakka.
For Timilehin, “a lot of opportunities exist for young people in tech, he believes that tertiary education is not a prerequisite for breaking into tech beyond expectations, with the right resources to onboard properly and having the right mentorship to put them on the right path. With all these building blocks in place any one looking to get into tech person can make it”.
Trakka seeks to redefine personal finance by enabling users to track spending habits and charges across different accounts in a single interface. Sign Up with Trakka to get started.
