Merchant tools
Stock list, receipts, a till that works offline, a free shop website, a customer list. Free permanently.
Brings merchants in, and turns their stock into data we can match against.
Buyers ask. Shops bid. Escrow holds the money.
Bidazk is a reverse marketplace for physical goods. Buyers say what they want, nearby shops bid to supply it, and the payment waits in escrow on Stellar until the item arrives. Merchants get free software that runs their shop, and that software is what lets them sell while they sleep.
A marketplace turned the other way round
Every marketplace you know is supply-first. Shops list what they have and you go searching: Jumia, Jiji, Instagram vendors, Computer Village. You do the walking, the scrolling and the haggling.
Bidazk is demand-first. You post a Wanted Post, and it goes to every shop whose stock matches and who can reach you. They send offers with price, delivery time, distance and rating. You pick one. You never scroll past things you did not ask for.
iPhone 13, 128GB, battery above 85%, under ₦520,000, delivered in Uyo within 3 days.
- Shop A · 2.1 km · 4.8★₦498,000
- Shop B · 5.4 km · 4.6★₦505,000
- Shop C · 8.0 km · 4.9★₦512,000
Three businesses that feed each other
Reverse marketplace
Buyers post what they want, shops bid to supply it, escrow holds the money until it arrives.
The engine. Bidazk earns only when a sale actually completes.
Market intelligence
Anonymous, aggregated data on what people asked for, at what price, where, and whether anyone had it.
Manufacturers and wholesalers have no view of unmet demand. We do.
02 · The problem
Nobody trusts anybody, and nobody can see demand
Buyers
- Finding one specific phone means messaging ten vendors and comparing prices that change with who is asking.
- Paying first is a gamble. Wrong item, fake, or nothing at all.
- Nobody competes for you. You go to the shop; the shop never comes to you.
Merchants
- Their stock is invisible. A buyer two streets away will never know they have it.
- They miss sales while closed. A buyer asks at 11 pm and has bought elsewhere by 9 am.
- Delivering first is also a gamble: fake transfer alerts, buyers who vanish after delivery.
- Inventory apps, POS terminals and website builders are monthly bills a small shop cannot justify.
Manufacturers
- They know what sold. They do not know what people asked for and could not find, which is exactly what tells them what to make next.
Buyers do not trust sellers with money first. Sellers do not trust buyers to pay after. And nobody can see demand until it has already gone somewhere else.
Two sides, one escrow
The buyer
- Posts what they want, a budget, a location and a radius.
- Receives offers from shops that have it and can reach them.
- Compares price, distance, delivery time and rating, and accepts one.
- Pays into escrow. The money leaves the buyer but does not reach the shop.
- Inspects the item and confirms, and the shop is paid. If it is wrong, they dispute and a referee decides.
The merchant
- Runs the shop on the free tools: stock list, till, receipts, website.
- Because stock is already recorded, matching requests arrive by themselves.
- Sets a floor price once: “never sell this below ₦480,000.”
- Turns on the Sales Agent, which bids on matching requests automatically, inside that floor.
- Delivers and gets paid from escrow. No chasing, no fake alerts.
The Sales Agent
The seller bids and the buyer accepts. The agent works on the seller's side: it places bids and answers counter-offers automatically, with no approval from the merchant, so a request at 2 am gets a bid at 2 am. The platform checks every bid in milliseconds: above the floor, and actually in stock. The agent can never go below the floor, accept for the buyer, or move money, and every bid records why it was made.
04 · Why it is unique
The tool a shop needs is the thing that brings it buyers
Demand-first in a market built supply-first
Every competitor makes the buyer search. Bidazk makes shops compete for the buyer, so the buyer sees the real market price, not the “how much can you pay” price.
Free tools build a stock map nobody can buy
Small shops publish their stock nowhere. Bidazk gets it by giving away the tools they use every day. Every sale on the till updates a live, location-tagged map of what is in stock, where. That map is the moat.
The shop does not need to be online
A Sales Agent bids on matching requests inside the merchant's floor price, at 2 am with the shop locked, and records why it bid. Other marketplaces only sell while the merchant is on their phone.
Escrow on every order
Trust is the default, not an add-on. Paid into escrow, released on confirmation, refunded if the shop does not deliver, referred to a referee if they disagree.
Unmet demand is a dataset nobody else has
“31 people near Ajah asked for a 3.5KVA generator last week; 4 shops had one.” Sold anonymised and aggregated, never traceable to a person, to the people who decide what to stock.
Built for how Nigeria trades
The till works offline through network cuts. Matching stays inside the buyer's radius. In-person handover is supported. The shop website goes straight into a WhatsApp status.
| Model | Has | Missing |
|---|---|---|
| Listing marketplacesJumia, Jiji | Buyers | No reason for shops to keep stock accurate; you still search |
| Merchant toolsBumpa and similar | Software for shops | No buyers come with it |
| Social commerceInstagram, WhatsApp vendors | Reach | No trust, no escrow, no price competition |
| Bidazk | The tool a shop needs to run is the same thing that brings it buyers | Nothing on this list |
Every turn of the wheel makes the next one cheaper
- Free tools
- More merchants
- More stock on the map
- More requests filled
- More buyers
- More demand data
…which makes the free tools and the agent more valuable to the next merchant, and the wheel turns again.
Software, not logistics
Bidazk never owns vans or warehouses. Each new user costs almost nothing to serve.
The agent removes the human bottleneck
A merchant can answer hundreds of requests a day without typing a reply.
City by city
Matching is local, so each city is its own network. Win one, copy the playbook to the next.
Revenue that stacks
Each income line arrives at a different stage, and none of them takes anything from a merchant who declines it.
Free to join, free to list, free to bid. Bidazk earns after it delivers.
- A small cut of each completed saleOnce escrow is live
- Sales Agent subscription, priced below the profit on one saleOnce the agent ships
- Custom web address for a merchant's shopEarly
- Market intelligence subscriptionsOnce the data is dense enough
- Working capital for merchants, repaid from each saleLater, with a licensed partner
The whole game is reaching density in one city first. Pricing is set once a city has enough buyers and shops for it to matter.
06 · Where Stellar comes in
Escrow forces one question: who holds the money?
Bidazk's bank account
We hold everyone's money
Everyone must trust Bidazk, we need a Central Bank licence to hold it, and nobody can see what happens to it.
A payment company's escrow
Held funds on a private ledger
Rules live in a private database and can change. A dispute is a support ticket.
A Stellar smart contract
The money sits in public code nobody controls
No catch on custody. The limits are below, said plainly.
On Stellar, the rules are a public program
- The money can only go to that deal's buyer or that deal's seller. Not even Bidazk can take it.
- If the shop misses the delivery deadline, the buyer is refunded without asking anyone.
- If the buyer receives the item and goes silent, the shop is paid when the inspection window closes.
- The referee can only split a disputed payment between those two people, never send it elsewhere.
- Every payment is on a public ledger. Anyone can check it.
“People pay in naira. So where does Stellar come in?”
Users pay in naira and get paid in naira. Stellar is the rail the naira travels on, not the currency they see. Like Visa behind a naira debit card: you pay in naira, the payment travels over a network you never think about.
The bridge is called an anchor
An anchor is a licensed company that takes in naira and issues the same amount as a naira token on Stellar, and does the reverse on the way out. Stellar defines one standard way for apps to talk to every anchor, so Bidazk integrates once.
Naira, not crypto
- We are not converting naira into XLM. Naira is represented on Stellar one-for-one, the way a bank balance represents naira. The value is naira the whole time.
- Naira stays legal tender. Nobody is asked to price, pay or be paid in another currency.
- Users never touch XLM. XLM only pays the network fee, a fraction of a kobo, and Bidazk pays it on the user's behalf.
- No exchange-rate risk in escrow. The token is pegged 1:1, so ₦520,000 in is ₦520,000 out.
- BuyerPays ₦520,000 by bank transfer or card, inside the Bidazk app.
- Anchor (licensed)Receives the naira and issues 520,000 NGNC, a naira token, on Stellar.
- Escrow contractHolds the 520,000 NGNC under public rules nobody can bend.
- On deliveryBuyer confirms, and the NGNC goes to the shop. Missed deadline: back to the buyer. Dispute: the referee splits it.
- Anchor (licensed)Takes the NGNC back and pays ₦520,000 into the shop's bank account.
Check it yourself
Naira is already on Stellar
NGNC is a naira token pegged 1:1, issued by LINK.IO and run as a Stellar anchor on the standard deposit and withdrawal protocol. Thousands of accounts hold it on Stellar's main network today. The issuer's configuration file, which only the real issuer can publish, describes it as an “asset backed token pegged 1:1 to Nigerian Naira”.
Bank-account escrow against Stellar escrow
| Bank account | Stellar contract | |
|---|---|---|
| Who can move the money | Whoever controls the account | Only the contract's rules |
| Can the rules change quietly | Yes | No. Public code, no upgrade switch |
| Can a user check the money is there | They trust a statement | They look it up on the public ledger |
| Refund or release on a deadline | A person or a scheduled job | Built into the contract |
| Cost per transaction | Bank and gateway fees | A fraction of a kobo in network fees |
| Settlement time | Minutes to days | About 5 seconds |
What Stellar unlocks beyond escrow
Diaspora buyers
Someone in London buys a generator for their mother in Uyo, paying in dollar stablecoin (USDC). Stellar converts it to naira tokens in the same transaction, and the shop in Uyo is paid in naira.
Dollar protection, if a shop wants it
A merchant worried about inflation can choose to be paid in USDC instead. Same contract, different token.
Fees anyone can check
Bidazk's cut can be taken by the contract at release, visibly, so a merchant can verify they were charged exactly what was agreed.
Lending repaid at source
A share of each sale can go to a loan repayment before it reaches the merchant, automatically and provably.
A sales record nobody can fake
A merchant's completed escrow payments are public and verifiable: exactly what a lender wants and a market trader cannot otherwise show.
The honest limits
Regulation still applies
Holding money for others is regulated in Nigeria. Stellar does not remove that; it changes the licensed partner's job from holding the money to converting naira in and out, while the contract holds it.
Wallets must be invisible
Shoppers will not manage keys. Production uses wallets created and secured behind an email login. The demo uses throwaway testnet wallets so anyone can try it in ten seconds.
Delivery has to be proven
A contract cannot see a phone change hands. An inspection window, disputes and a referee cover it today; courier proof of delivery and a handover PIN are next.
08 · Where we are
What is built, and what is next
- Full platform design: five services, data model, money rules, security, roadmapWritten
- Marketing siteLive
- Escrow smart contract on Stellar, 34 automated tests covering every ruleLive on testnet
- Two-phone escrow demoLive
- Marketplace, merchant tools, Sales Agent, mobile appDesigned, next to build
What people usually ask
Why not just use Paystack or a bank for escrow?
Then everyone has to trust Bidazk with their money, and the rules live in a private database. On Stellar the money sits in public code that not even Bidazk can take from, and anyone can verify it.
Is naira really on Stellar?
Yes. NGNC, a naira token pegged 1:1 and issued by LINK.IO, is on Stellar's main network with thousands of holders. The ledger entry and the issuer's own configuration are linked above, so you can check it yourself.
So you are converting naira to crypto?
No. Naira is represented on Stellar one-for-one, the way a bank balance represents naira. Value stays in naira from the buyer's card to the shop's bank account. Stellar is the rail and the rulebook.
Do users need a crypto wallet or XLM?
No. Wallets are created behind a normal login, and Bidazk pays the tiny network fee on the user's behalf. Users only ever see naira.
What if the naira moves while money is in escrow?
It is held as a naira token pegged 1:1, so ₦520,000 in is ₦520,000 out. A merchant who wants dollar protection can choose USDC instead.
What stops a buyer lying that it never arrived?
Once the shop marks it delivered, the refund path closes. The buyer can only dispute, inside a time limit, and a referee decides. Courier proof of delivery and a handover PIN come next.
What stops the referee taking the money?
The contract only lets the referee split a payment between that buyer and that seller. Even a stolen referee key cannot pay itself. You can try it in the demo.
How is this different from Jiji or Jumia?
They make you search. Bidazk makes shops compete for you, and holds the money until the item arrives.
Why would merchants join before there are buyers?
Because the tools are free and useful on day one: stock, till, receipts, a shop website. The marketplace is what they get on top.
Pay first without trusting first.
Grab a friend and two phones. One sells, one buys, and the money waits in a contract nobody controls.