https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p7p1Mr92AHE4klne0pr5wWi4JulPKgbUpmWxm_uWTKw/edit?usp=sharing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh0sfEx2iOY

N/A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh0sfEx2iOY

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For immigrants in the US sending money in the Central America and the Caribbean regions who face challenging pain points: Funds sent are not instantly spendable, no visibility of remittances usage, no long term solution to sponsor their relatives and reduce recurring requests. Kura is a multi-sided platform providing instant spending for recipients which increases transparency on transactions. 

US based Immigrant communities who send money to their relatives abroad are often financially distressed by recurring requests from relatives, but have no visibility on how the remittances sent are spent. They pay expensive fees on each transaction, and are looking for a long term solution to reduce recurring requests and find a peace of mind. The platform serves millions of immigrants from Central America and the Caribbean sending more than $60B dollars back home each year.

Kura provides instant spending for recipients of cross-border payments and Kura increases transparency by providing labeling on remittance usage using a closed-loop payment mechanism between immigrants (senders), the remittance (receiver), and local service providers (vendors), that enables senders to assign a specific purpose for the transfer. Kura is a digital remittance and payment platform leveraging a SAAS model that allows remittance receivers to use a QR code in a closed-loop payment at their local points of sale for the exchange of goods and services after receiving a remittance transfer from senders.

In the longer term, we aim to leverage blockchain to power both online and offline payments for underserved markets where traditional payments rails are lacking significantly. A few use examples: incumbents who want to leverage digital/online payments, tech startups who want to accept digitally and serve customers in these local regions, and NGOS/Philanthropic organizations who need to serve beneficiaries in receiving countries.
 

For the first phase of our project, Kura will leverage Stellar's Crypto Management on SDP (Stellar Disbursement Platform) to facilitate the disbursement of funds to SMB vendors and merchants onboarded to the platform . In the future our platform will leverage smart contracts to be able to able to continue and increase our efficiency and create additional rules-based programmable wallet solutions for users and merchants . The KURA wallet will interact with smart contract to deposit and manage the crypto. Once our user deposits the crypto, it will be saved to the offchain database for the KURA wallet, so the balance of the KURA wallet will be increased.

 

We have linked technical architecture document for the review committee's reference.
 

 

Our product is nearing completion with a growing list of 200 potential user on our waitlist waiting to use the platform. Additionally, we have already onboarded vendors in the local markets (receiving countries) who will leverage Kura to accept an alternative payments method to boost their revenues.

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Total estimation of the delivery for the Stellar integration would be 6 weeks.

1. Stellar wallet infrastructure

Brief description: Enhancing the foundation for Kura’s Stellar wallet infrastructure for scalability and also for multiple integrations with various anchors and savings protocols to enabling the pulling of funds from customers wallet into Kura's wallet

How to measure completion: Test the wallet integration on the Stellar testnet or mainnet 

Estimated time of completion: 1 week

Budget: $10K

 

2. Crypto Management on SDP(Stellar Disbursement Platform)

Brief description: Experience convenience and accessibility through our local wallet funding feature.

How to measure completion: User should be able to deposit/manage their KURA wallet with stable coins. 

Estimated time of completion: 2 weeks

Budget: $20K

 

3. Wallet Funding with Fiat

Brief description: Experience convenience and accessibility through our local wallet funding feature.

 

How to measure completion: User should be able to fund their Kura wallet with local currency (provided by the anchor), successful testing of on-ramp process with fiat. 

Estimated time of completion: 1 week

Budget: $10K

4. USDC Card Management

Brief Description: Providing options for users to create Spend USDC assets through KURA USDC virtual cards, fund and spend on merchant stores where credit cards are supported.

How to Measure Completion: Gauge success through the implementation of advanced card management functionalities and stringent security protocols - create card, and make payments. 

Estimated time of completion: 1 week
Budget: $5K

5. Setup webpage for B2B Payments

Description: Enhancing support for business transactions with a dedicated webpage, elevate user experience, streamline processes, and showcase our commitment to efficient financial interactions.

How to measure completion: Present relevant documentation as well as a live demo of the feature. 

Estimated time of completion: 1 week
Budget: $5k

 

50000

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Kura 

Kura is a B2B2C cross border payments platform enabling end-recipients to spend the money sent to them directly at the point of sale without needing to have a bank account or needing to pick up cash. The platform serves 11 millions of immigrants from Central America and the Caribbean sending up to $60B dollars back home. In the longer term, we aim to leverage blockchain to power both online and offline payments for underserved markets where traditional payments rails are lacking significantly.  A few use examples: incumbents who want to leverage digital/online payments, tech startups who want to accept digitally and serve customers in these local regions, and NGOS/Philanthropic organizations who need to serve beneficiaries in receiving countries.

We are best positioned to solve this intractable problem given the diversity of our background, our skill sets, and our network in the ecosystems that we’ll serve in the US, Central America and the Caribbean regions. We are currently participating in the Techstars Payments powered by Stellar and Moneygram. 

Stéphanie (CEO) (HBS) brings a wealth of experience in financial services and fintech/payments from working between EY, American Express. She spent her early career helping top financial services companies adopt products and technologies to streamline their operations and reduce costs. At HBS she focused on fintech/tech startups in global markets and worked with venture-backed startups across the UK, Kenya, and South Africa. 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniejoseph19/
Discord:
Clifford (COO) (MIT Sloan) has built the first tech-incubator in the Caribbean region. He has raised and allocated up to $2M in funding across multiple tech startups, acted as senior advisor to government officials of the LAC regions on financial inclusion, remittances, and digital economy. 

Furthermore, we have an unfair advantage because of the strong relationships that we have in the LAC region, specifically with the merchants/vendors that will onboard the platform and with immigrant associations based in North America.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cliffordreginaldnau/
Charles, Senior Software Engineer: https://x.com/charlesetherfan Discord: charlesetherfan has experience in blockchain and software development with over 10+ years of software engineering experience and 4 years of web3 experience. He also has experience in developing smart contracts, with strong knowledge of Blockchain, Ethereum, Ethereum 2.0, ERC20, ERC721, ERC1155, Waves, Tron, Solidity, Rust, Solana, React, Vue.js, and Node.js for optimal functionality. He is engaged in decision-making through code reviews to ensure quality and standards compliance, reusability, and ease of maintenance. He is highly proficient in object-oriented methodologies, data structures, algorithms, quality coding and debugging skills.

 

 

 At a high level, we expect $300K for Y1 to cover the entire deployment and launch of the first version of the full-feature  Kura platform  (tech development only) including the integration with additional tech providers e.g., (KYC, SMS Notifications, and Tech Support providers.).

• We're building 3 different applications (Consumer facing application including rules-based back-end to initiate sponsorship, Vendor Application with payment acceptance capabilities, QR code generation, and reconciliation, and the Kura admin panel to manage customers).  All details related to our applications, including process flow can be found in our technical documentation: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p7p1Mr92AHE4klne0pr5wWi4JulPKgbUpmWxm_uWTKw/edit#heading=h.2bn6wsx

We have secured some initial early funding to build the early versions of our product and to ramp up our staff, including contractors. We are excited at the prospect of securing the activation award and continue to build on Stellar.
We will be fundraising at the end of  Techstars Payments Program to further support tech development and hiring. 

In additional, pleas see an overview on how we plan on allocating the proceeds of our next round of fundraising 
- 30% - we will build the full-feature product including tech & API integrations.

-  15% We will finalize our legal (IP) and regulatory compliance program, including AML, KYC, and SOC 2 Compliance.
- 30% We will scale our marketing, vendor, and customer acquisition operation.

- 25% Hiring/Scaling operations: We will  build a winning team as we scale.