Africa Ignite Hackathon · Nokia NaC / CAMARA

Visa is the rails for payments.
TrustScore is the rails for trust.

A portable reputation passport for the 93% of African adults outside formal credit systems. Anchored to network identity. Owned by the borrower. Trusted by the lender.

Create an account
1.7B
unbanked adults globally — credit-invisible to the formal bureaus
85%
of Ugandans use mobile money — none of it scored by Equifax
7s
median time to a TrustScore decision · USSD or web
5
network-anchored signals from Nokia CAMARA, every query
The problem

A SACCO loans 2 million shillings on a handshake. The bureau loans nothing at all.

Both are wrong. One has too much trust, the other has none. We built the missing layer between them.

Today

The handshake economy

  • SACCOs decide on personal acquaintance — fine for the village, fatal for scale.
  • A defaulter at one VSLA can quietly join another the next week.
  • Traditional bureaus (Equifax, CRB) require formal payslips. 92% of borrowers don't have one.
  • Apps like Tala over-extract data and over-charge — high churn, predatory APRs.
  • SIM-swap fraud is rising. No lender today verifies the SIM is the same SIM.
With TrustScore

A reputation you carry

  • Every on-time repayment, every group meeting, every savings deposit — counted.
  • Multi-borrowing across SACCOs becomes visible to every SACCO.
  • Borrowers own the score. Lenders see it only with explicit USSD or in-app consent.
  • Five Nokia CAMARA checks anchor identity to a real, stable SIM. SIM-swap stops at the door.
  • Borrower-friendly: 645 isn't a denial, it's a roadmap to 720.
What we score

Five signals. Nothing exotic.

No social-graph scraping, no device fingerprinting, no contact-list harvesting. Just the data you actually generate as a borrower, weighted transparently.

Repayment · 40%
On-time history across every SACCO and VSLA you belong to. The dominant signal.
Savings · 20%
Deposit consistency. A steady 50K weekly outweighs a one-off 1M lump sum.
Group standing · 15%
Tenure, attendance, peer endorsements. Office-bearer roles weighted higher.
Mobile money · 15%
Pattern, not amount. Predictable inflow + outflow signals real economic activity.
Identity · 10%
Five Nokia CAMARA APIs: number-verify, SIM-swap, KYC-match, location, tenure.
Network-anchored, not screen-anchored

43% of mobile-money fraud is SIM swap. We verify against the SIM, not the screen.

Number Verification
MSISDN matched to active subscriber
SIM Swap
No swap event in 72 hours
KYC Match
Name + DOB matched to registry
Location
Cell ID matched to declared region
Device Swap
IMEI continuity verified
The flow

Seven seconds from query to decision.

Adam types a phone number. The borrower gets a USSD prompt. They approve. He sees a score. The whole loop never leaves the carrier network.

01
Lender queries by phone
Adam at Mbarara SACCO types a member's number into the dashboard.
02
Borrower receives USSD prompt
Catherine's feature phone rings with a *384*55# consent request.
03
CAMARA layer fires
Five Nokia Network-as-Code APIs verify number, SIM, KYC, location, device.
04
Score returned · explained
Lender sees 645/B, the five component bars, and an AI underwriter note.
Where we fit

Not Equifax. Not Tala. The third option.

Works without payslips
TrustScore
✓ Yes
Equifax
✕ Required
Tala
✓ Yes
Borrower owns + consents
TrustScore
✓ Per-query
Equifax
✕ Bureau-owned
Tala
✕ Lender-owned
SIM-swap protected
TrustScore
✓ CAMARA
Equifax
✕ No
Tala
✕ No
Multi-SACCO visibility
TrustScore
✓ Native
Equifax
✕ Banks only
Tala
✕ App-internal
Works on a Nokia 105
TrustScore
✓ USSD
Equifax
✕ Web only
Tala
✕ Smartphone only
Borrower price
TrustScore
✓ Free
Equifax
✕ Lender pays
Tala
✕ ~50% APR loans
“I have run my SACCO for nineteen years on memory and gut. TrustScore is the first thing that lets me see beyond my own branch — and the first thing my members trust me to ask.”
Adam Tumusiime Loan officer · Mbarara Co-op SACCO · 4,200 members

Ready to see a TrustScore in seven seconds?

Walk the lender flow