Why are you participating for Based Africa?

We're participating in Based Africa because we've identified a critical gap in Nigeria's booming social commerce sector. With over 3million vendors in Nigeria now using social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter) as their primary retail channel, there's an urgent need for accessible cross-border payment solutions.

Currently, these social media-based business owners face significant barriers in receiving international payments. While they can easily market their products globally, converting international interest into actual sales remains a challenge. Traditional payment gateways are unsuitable for these merchants as they require extensive documentation and dedicated websites - resources that most social media vendors don't have.

We chose Base blockchain specifically for its permissionless nature, cheap gas fees, and sponsored gas compatibility which allowed us to create a payment solution that align with how Nigerian social media businesses actually operate, rather than forcing them to adapt to conventional banking structures.

What challenges are you focusing on?

At BaseLink, we're focused on a specific challenge: enabling cross-border payments for Nigeria's informal business sector. Our target users are informal business owners who currently operate primarily through social media DMs. These businesses face two critical issues:

• No structured system to manage international payments
• Lack of proper inventory management tools

Our focus is on solving these two challenge,

How does your submission address this challenge?

BaseLink solves this issue by enabling users receive payments globally in seconds without the errors of sharing long wallet addresses. Thanks to Smart wallet integration and gasless transactions, users can create a link in seconds even without understanding the intricaies of wallets. With just their FaceId or thumb scan, they can onboard, thanks to Base smart wallet.

BaseLink provides a solution that allows online vendors, communities, and individuals to receive global payments seamlessly. Our key features include:

• FaceID/thumb scan onboarding through Base smart wallet integration
• Easy payment link generation without any technical knowledge
• Zero gas fees for transactions

This means social media business owners can create USDT payment links in seconds, share them directly in their DM conversations, and receive payments!

Challenges we ran into

Our primary challenge during development was implementing smart wallet integration in a way that would make the user experience as simple as possible. We wanted to ensure that merchants could start using the platform without any blockchain knowledge or technical expertise.

The Base smart wallet documentation proved invaluable in overcoming this challenge.