Nigerian fintech startup KliQr is providing innovative and simple tools aimed at helping people achieve financial freedom, manage their finances and make better financial decisions.
Launched early last year, KliQr has rolled out a mobile application that allows users to automatically monitor their transactions. Users can also schedule reminders for and pay one-time or recurring bills, with all activity presented in easy-to-understand reports.
Julian Ijere – co-founder of the business along with Ugo Amanoh – told Disrupt Africa the idea for KliQr came out of personal frustration.
“Ugo was denied access into a gym facility because his membership had expired, the same day that I had my satellite TV service cut off because my subscription had run out,” he said.
“So that evening, while we shared events of the day, Ugo asked a defining question – “why can’t we have a reminder app that notifies you about your recurring bills, before they’re due”. And this was how KliQr was born.”
Out of that original idea – for bill reminders and notifications – came a service that also allows users to pay their bills.
“We reviewed platforms in the market that were already offering bill payments, and we quickly realised that to be relevant in the space we must offer much more than just bill payment,” Ijere said.
“This was when we found that being able to help users track their financial transactions, and present it to them in a way that is easy to understand, would be the perfect value add to a regular bills management and payments app.”
There have since been over 1,000 tagged transactions by users on KliQr.
“That is a big deal for us, as very many functionalities on KliQr rely on users correctly tagging their credit and debit transactions,” Ijere said.
He said the self-funded startup has a vision and is determined to build it as far as it can.
“We believe that even at this early stage we can give our users great value and then look to securing what KliQr will need to grow globally,” he said.
“We have had steady growth in new and active users, and this is particularly exciting considering that we have not done a lot of marketing. We are pretty impressed with the numbers so far. We have over 50 per cent of our users tagging their transactions and thereby keeping track of their finances, and over 70 per cent of users actively managing their bills on KliQr. There has also been a lot of great feedback and reviews from users and we expect to do even better in the coming months.”
