What we get asked

No. Receiving your change is free. It is your money — you should not pay to get it back.

At launch the app requires an Android smartphone. We know that excludes people: USSD access, usable from any handset, is part of what comes next. It is not available yet, and we would rather say so.

Yes. You request the withdrawal in the app, and the partner microfinance, which holds the funds, pays it out. Nothing is debited before the payout; if it is not paid within three days, the amount becomes available again.

No. Your balance belongs to you and does not evaporate. That is exactly the difference from a paper voucher forgotten in a pocket.

No, and it is an attempted fraud. Receiving money never requires your PIN. Your PIN only ever moves money out: paying, withdrawing. Never share it.

No, and that is deliberate. The shopkeeper gives you a six-digit code; you type it yourself, on your own phone. The code is valid only for that amount, for three minutes, once.

Report it and the device is revoked immediately: it can no longer reach your account. Your balance is untouched — it is recorded with the financial institution, not in your phone.

That is the most legitimate question, so here is the straight answer: with a paper voucher you keep the customer’s money until they return — sometimes forever. With Kobri you give it back immediately. That genuinely changes your cash position.

What you get in return: you stop buying small change, which already costs you margin; the customer comes back anyway, exactly as with the voucher; and you stop losing the sales you currently abandon for want of coins.

A printed QR on the counter is enough. No terminal, no subscription, no installation. A smartphone at the till additionally lets you generate per-operation codes, which are safer, but it is not required.

Daily-code mode is capped: you set a daily envelope, and nothing can go beyond it. The code rotates automatically every night, and you can revoke it immediately from your dashboard. The recommended mode — a different code per operation — removes the risk entirely.

Yes if you enable it. It is an option, and your till decides.

From your merchant dashboard: transaction log, change given back over the period, outstanding float, and an export for your accountant.

No, and it does not need one under this structure. COBAC Regulation R-2019/01 provides that distributors and sub-distributors operating under the cover of an approved payment service provider are not themselves subject to approval. You are the approved provider; Kobri is your distributor; merchants are your sub-distributors.

With you, in your segregated account. Kobri is never the custodian. The internal ledger tracks each user’s share and reconciles against your statement.

No. The default mode requires no interface from you: the Kobri ledger is authoritative and real movements are reconciled against your statement. Most Cameroonian microfinance institutions expose no technical interface — we designed the service around that fact, rather than hoping otherwise.

The merchant funds their account in advance: they cannot give back more change than they have deposited. This limit is not an application rule that could be bypassed — it is a constraint of the database itself, which refuses a negative balance.

It falls to you: every sub-distributor engaged must be notified within one month, with the file required by Article 6(2) of R-2019/01. Kobri assembles that file automatically on each enrolment, counts down the deadline and alerts you before it expires. An incomplete file stays pending with a list of what is missing — we do not send the regulator an incomplete file.

The ledger is kept in double entry: every movement produces two balancing entries, and the sum of all balances is exactly zero. An automated check verifies this continuously. The sensitive-action log is hash-chained: any retroactive change breaks the chain and becomes detectable — including a change made directly in the database.

The funds are with you, not with us: their fate does not depend on our survival. The ledger sits in a standard PostgreSQL database and is fully exportable. No proprietary technology holds your data.