M-Pesa —a digital money service platform, is often held up as the gold standard of financial inclusion that is transforming East Africa. But what if the region’s most celebrated mobile money system isn’t the finish line, but just the starting block? What if the next revolution isn’t moving from cash to digital, but from digital fiat to something far more powerful?
In Tanzania, a small team is quietly building that bridge. ChapSmart connects Bitcoin’s Lightning Network directly to M-Pesa, giving millions of East Africans something M-Pesa alone never could: savings that resist inflation, remittances that arrive in seconds instead of days, and money that doesn’t ask for permission.
We sat down with the founder to talk about the moment they realized M-Pesa wasn’t enough, and why they believe the future of Tanzanian finance isn’t a bank account—it’s a Bitcoin wallet.
First Steps
- Before ChapSmart came to existence, what was the moment that made you say, “Someone has to fix this, and it might as well be me”?
ChapSmart didn’t start as a remittance company. It started as an education platform. We were teaching people in Tanzania about Bitcoin — what it is, how it works, why it matters. And the response was incredible. People were genuinely curious.
But then the questions shifted. People stopped asking “What is Bitcoin?” and started asking “How can I actually use Bitcoin in my daily life?” They wanted to buy airtime, pay bills, send money to family — real, everyday things.
That was the moment. The community told us what they needed, and we listened. ChapSmart evolved from education into infrastructure because the people we were building for demanded it.
- Tanzania has mobile money penetration that most of the world envies. Most people assume M-Pesa already solved the money problem. What did you see that M-Pesa was missing?
M-Pesa is phenomenal at what it does. It moved Tanzania from cash to digital in a way that changed millions of lives. But M-Pesa is still operating inside the old system — it’s digital fiat. What it’s missing is Bitcoin.
M-Pesa can’t protect your savings from inflation. It can’t receive a borderless payment from someone in Russia or Canada without going through expensive corridors. It doesn’t give you sovereignty over your own money. That’s the gap we saw.
ChapSmart doesn’t compete with M-Pesa — we complete it. We bridge Bitcoin and the Lightning Network directly into M-Pesa, so Tanzanians get the best of both worlds: the convenience of mobile money and the freedom of Bitcoin.
- When you first told people in Tanzania that you were building a Bitcoin company, what was the most common reaction you got? And how did that feel?
Honestly, most people didn’t understand it at first. In Tanzania, Bitcoin is still associated with scams for many people. The most common reaction was skepticism — sometimes even concern.
But that never discouraged us. We didn’t start ChapSmart to chase hype. We started it because we believe in what we’re building. Our goal has always been to help build the Bitcoin ecosystem in Tanzania and across East Africa.
Every skeptic we convert into a user, every family that receives their first Lightning payment — that’s what keeps us going. We’re not here to convince people with words. We’re here to show them with working products.
The BUIDL Journey
- You chose Alby Hub as your wallet infrastructure when you started. Walk us through that decision — is there anything you tried before, and why did you settle for Alby?
Alby Hub was actually our first choice when we launched. It was easy to integrate, fast, and it got us up and running quickly. For an early-stage company in Tanzania trying to prove that Bitcoin-to-M-Pesa was possible, speed mattered.
But as we grew, our priorities shifted. We needed more control, more sovereignty over our infrastructure. So we’ve since moved to a more sovereign setup.
That’s the natural evolution of building on Bitcoin — you start with trusted tools, and as you mature, you take more ownership. We’re grateful to Alby for getting us started, but ChapSmart’s future is built on infrastructure we fully control.
- Do you remember the very first transaction via ChapSmart? How did it feel when it confirmed on Lightning?
I’ll never forget it. It was a student from Russia sending money to their family in Tanzania.
Think about that for a moment. A young person studying abroad, probably struggling with expensive remittance fees and slow bank transfers, found ChapSmart and sent money home over the Lightning Network. It arrived in seconds. The family received it directly in their M-Pesa.
When that transaction confirmed, it wasn’t just a technical milestone. It was proof that what we believed in was real — that Bitcoin could connect people across borders, instantly and affordably. That one transaction carried the entire vision of ChapSmart in it.
- Your fee is 1.32% when converting BTC to mobile money. In real shillings, that’s roughly 7,180 TZS saved on a 100,000 TZS transfer. Have you ever sat with a Tanzanian family and watched them realize what that difference means to their monthly budget?
What people need to understand about the Lightning Network is that it’s not just fast — it’s fundamentally cheaper. And ChapSmart passes those savings directly to our users.
But we go even further. We’ve built a three-tier loyalty system: Bronze, Silver, and Gold. The more you use ChapSmart, the cheaper it becomes. Your fees decrease as you move up. So it’s not just about saving on one transfer — it’s about building a long-term relationship where every transaction gets more affordable.
For a Tanzanian family receiving money from abroad every month, that difference compounds. Over a year, those savings can mean extra meals, school fees paid on time, or medicine that was previously out of reach. That’s not abstract. That’s real life.
- You launched a private, encrypted Fedi community combining a Bitcoin wallet with secure messaging. In a world obsessed with public social media, why did you deliberately choose to build in private — and what have you discovered inside that space?
Because we learn from Bitcoin, we build with Bitcoin.
Bitcoin teaches you that privacy is not something to be ashamed of — it’s a right. It teaches you that decentralization matters, that communities are stronger when they’re built on trust rather than algorithms chasing engagement.
Our Fedi community is exactly that. It’s a space where our users can communicate securely, hold Bitcoin in a shared wallet, and learn together without being tracked or monetized.
What we’ve discovered inside is something you can’t find on public social media: genuine conversations, honest feedback, and a community that’s building together rather than performing for likes. The best ideas for ChapSmart’s future have come from inside that space.
- What is the tough thing about building a Bitcoin company in Tanzania that nobody talks about publicly — the part that makes you question yourself on hard days? What keeps you going through that?
The hardest part is the isolation. When you’re building something that most people around you don’t fully understand, there are days when you wonder if you’re seeing something that isn’t there. The regulatory uncertainty, the skepticism, the technical challenges of building in a market with inconsistent infrastructure — those are the things nobody talks about at Bitcoin conferences.
What keeps me going is the users. Every time someone successfully sends money through ChapSmart, every time a family receives funds they desperately needed, every time someone in our Fedi community shares how Bitcoin has changed their perspective — that’s the fuel. The hard days are real, but the impact is realer.
Social Impact
- Can you give us a story of someone whose life you feel ChapSmart has helped improve?
I keep coming back to that Russian student — our very first user. This was someone far from home, trying to support their family in Tanzania. Before ChapSmart, they were likely dealing with Western Union fees, bank delays, and middlemen taking a cut at every step.
With ChapSmart, they sent Bitcoin over Lightning, and their family received Tanzanian shillings in their M-Pesa within seconds. No paperwork, no waiting days and no losing a significant percentage to fees. That student didn’t just send money — they proved that there’s a better way. And each time they send again, it gets cheaper through our loyalty tiers. That’s the kind of impact we’re building for.
- The Human Rights Foundation spotlighted ChapSmart in their Financial Freedom Report (Weekly Financial Freedom Report #75, May 2025). What does “financial freedom” mean to a Tanzanian who has never heard the phrase — and how does ChapSmart translate that concept into something they can hold in their hands?
In Tanzania, most people don’t use the phrase “financial freedom.” But they understand the feeling of not having it — when inflation eats your savings, when you can’t receive money from abroad without losing a chunk of it, when your financial life depends on institutions you don’t control.
ChapSmart uses Bitcoin, and as the world increasingly understands: Bitcoin equals freedom. We don’t need to teach people a philosophy. We just need to give them a tool that works. When someone receives a Lightning payment directly to their M-Pesa and sees the full amount arrive — fast, cheap, and without anyone’s permission — they’re experiencing financial freedom. They just might not call it that yet.
- You recently demonstrated ChapSmart live in Nairobi, Kenya. East Africa is a big market with its own payment culture. Is there anything Kenya taught you that you couldn’t have learned in Tanzania? Are you building differently because of it?
Kenya is where M-Pesa was born, so the mobile money culture there is even more mature than in Tanzania. People in Nairobi are sophisticated about digital payments — they expect things to work instantly, and they have high standards.
What Kenya taught us is that our product holds up. When we demonstrated ChapSmart live, people understood the value proposition immediately. But Kenya also showed us the scale of what’s possible. East Africa isn’t one market — it’s multiple markets with shared infrastructure but different cultures and regulations. We’re building with that in mind now. ChapSmart was born in Tanzania, but it was always meant for the continent.
What Does the Future Hold?
- Do you believe ChapSmart can win independently? Or is the real product the ecosystem you’re helping to build?
Both, and I don’t think they conflict.
ChapSmart can absolutely win as a product. We’re solving a real problem — getting Bitcoin into M-Pesa quickly and affordably — and we’re doing it better than anyone else in our market. But the bigger vision has always been the ecosystem.
Every transaction through ChapSmart introduces someone to Bitcoin. Every family that receives a Lightning payment starts to understand what’s possible. We’re not just building a company — we’re building the rails for a Bitcoin economy in East Africa.
If ChapSmart succeeds and inspires ten more companies to build on Bitcoin in Tanzania, we’ve won something much bigger than market share.
- When they inevitably notice you — and they will — what is ChapSmart’s competitive strategy? What makes you genuinely hard to kill?
Three things: honesty, trust, and privacy. Those are our pillars, and they’re not things you can copy with money or engineering.
Honesty means we’re transparent about our fees, our technology, and our limitations. Trust is earned transaction by transaction — every time someone sends Bitcoin through ChapSmart and it arrives in M-Pesa within seconds, that trust deepens. And privacy means we respect our users’ data and their right to transact without surveillance.
A bigger company can copy our interface. They can match our fees. But they can’t replicate the relationship we’ve built with our community. We were here first, we built this from Tanzania, and our users know that we’re building for them — not for venture capital returns. That’s genuinely hard to kill.
- It’s 2036, ten years from now. ChapSmart has done everything it was envisioned to do. What does daily financial life look like for an ordinary Tanzanian? What role does ChapSmart play in that picture?
In 2036, an ordinary Tanzanian wakes up and checks their Bitcoin wallet. Not a bank account. Not just M-Pesa. A Bitcoin wallet.
They pay for their morning chapati with a Lightning payment. They receive their salary in Bitcoin. They send money to their mother in the village, and it arrives before they’ve finished their chai. No cash. No forms. No middlemen. Just easy, simple, sovereign money.
ChapSmart’s role in that picture is the bridge that made it possible. We’re the ones who connected Bitcoin to the financial language Tanzanians already spoke — mobile money. And by 2036, that bridge has become so seamless that people don’t even think about it anymore. They just live their financial lives freely. That’s the goal. That’s always been the goal.
Website: www.chapsmart.com
