Finance & Operations
March 15, 2022
The Zuberi report #1: Interpreting responses from potential users.
by
Julian Onwusu

We recently conducted a survey with 90 people in Accra and asked them about money.
Our goal is to speed up personal cash flow and give everyone in Africa the freedom to access their salary anytime, anywhere. To trust people to have more money in their pockets than usual means we will also take on the task to educate our users on how to make more intelligent choices with their money. People should be able to react quickly to unplanned events without going into debt. All of this should be done on one application.
Today, we’re publishing results from a survey we named “Ghana employee salary questionnaire” which we ran in February 2020 amongst our network of potential customers.
It’s interesting because we weren’t quite sure what to expect from the questions we asked (we just wanted an answer really). Some of the responses contradicted each other but nevertheless, we were happy with what we saw. Our aim is to run another survey with the same group of people after they have used our app for a few months. So here goes:
Q1: How often do you receive your salary?

As we thought, most people get paid on the standard monthly cycle. However, one person said they got paid bi-weekly (good for you).
Q2: Does your employer usually pay your salary on time?

A large majority of people receive their salaries on the date promised by their employer. We’re glad that more people actually receive money on time — let’s hope that number gets to 100% in future.
Q3: If there was an app that allowed you to withdraw your salary daily, would you use it?

This was a really interesting one — It was almost an equal 33.3% split amongst the 90 respondents between yes, maybe and no!
We’re not actually surprised to be honest — The concept of on-demand salary in Ghana is relatively if not completely new. We know that we’ll be first to market, which means that we have the responsibility to educate people on alternative options they have than taking out instant loans via mobile money, doing “susu” (a group saving technique) just to save money, and borrowing from relatives (even strangers at times).
So why should people say ‘Yes’ to an app they have no idea is possible to exist?
Q4 How often would you use this app?

This was an interesting piece of data for us, over the next few months, it will be interesting to see if the views shared by 90 people are actually the views of the majority of Ghanaians using the app. Twice a month is not a bad number for withdrawing money from an app, to be honest. We don’t want people to be addicted to using the platform, so we’ll make sure we put measures in place for people not to use it every single day of the month.
Why are we sharing this?
Well, when dealing with people’s money, especially their salary which is the key reason many people wake up to go to work in the morning, it’s important for us to be accountable to someone. That’s what we’re doing here, we’re being transparent about how we want to approach the growth of Zuberi by being open and honest about our findings. We’ll also do this via our Twitter and show you imagery via our Instagram.
We’re ensuring that the way we communicate with you is always going to be clear. Even when there are bugs or the app is down (which is inevitable at the start).
The Data we’re collecting
We’ll continue to run surveys every few months to have a better understanding of how our beta-users feel about the product. This will empower us to make more data-driven decisions in the future.
Tell us what you think by joining/starting discussions and growing our community, and follow @tryzuberi on Twitter now!
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