12/05/2025
𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝗳 𝗜 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗺𝘆 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗳𝗳 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘃𝗲?
In March 2023, our management team in Cameroon and Germany agreed to develop a fintech product named . This thought came as a result of a ‘ ’ operation which a friend of ours fell prey to. You know the drill, in order to transact large volumes across borders, many ditch conventional brick and mortar financial institutions because of the obvious.
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- 2 to 3 businesss days to transact
- Limit on the amount to be sent
- Tons of documents to justify source of income
- ETC
So our friend used one of such ‘black market’ operators for one of his transactions to send funds for goods to be purchased from China and shipped back home. Behold, he made the initial deposit in Cameroon, and back in China, half of the cash given him were fake notes. Needless to say, this gentleman learned the hard way. He is one of the thousands of victims around the world falling to such schemes daily but still never learn, as they’ll always tell ‘Sabinus’ - ‘You think say you deh wise!’
Our team had a similar fate, not directly linked to money transfer but outsourcing the development of GloSwitch to some Indians we met on Upwork. We did the initial deposit on the platform, provided our milestones but after 6 months of no progress, we sacked them.
They didn’t come from Cameroon, hence couldn’t put themselves in the African developer mindset to provide the solution we were in dire need of bringing to the market.
- It takes more than just coding, at times you have to be from that environment and know how to navigate around its odds when stuck.
Following that, we took a break, had an introspection and went back to the drawing board, how do we solve this dilemma despite over 10 senior IT engineers on our team. They could build the product in a heartbeat, but that’ll mean dividing their attention from working on the already income generating projects for the company to work on GloSwitch.
Alas’ Aime Kouemeko like , had an ‘ !’ Moment.
‘Let’s go for computer engineering students.’ He said,
‘We’ll train them and they’ll be more affordable than the Indians.’
What if we train them and they leave? Another conundrum, but we didn’t tarry on that thought. We onboarded 6 students from a top notch computer engineering school in the country and within 6 months we had a GloSwitch prototype.
In August, 2024 during the ( ) 2024 hosted by , we introduced GloSwitch in presence of the Minister of Post and Telecommunication among other key stakeholders of the country.
Now we have a team of 18 IT students supporting our workforce in various capacities.
During top management meetings we still ask ourselves, what if we train them and they leave, and the lingering answer, we don't train them and they stay?
Visit www.gloswitch.com today for , and transactions.
