It started with a simple frustration. As a Ghanaian grad student in the US, I found myself constantly juggling multiple currencies, optimizing when to send money home, and trying to understand how my spending patterns affected my ability to support my family and pursue my education.
As a Financial Economics graduate, I craved for a tool that could help keep track of my spending, savings, and remittances across borders. A tool that could provide insights tailored to my unique situation—living between two economies, two cultures, and two sets of financial expectations.
Back then, the apps available—Mint, YNAB, and others—weren't built for someone like me. They didn't understand remittances and exchange rate comparison. This is not a problem I faced alone, friends from Nigeria, Kenya and other African countries faced similar challenges. They couldn't track cedis, naira or shilling and dollars seamlessly. What I noticed was that, The existing apps had little concept of the unique financial pressures facing the African diaspora.
"I needed a tool that understood my life between two worlds. When I couldn't find it, I decided to build it."
— Founder, PayogoPayogo was born from lived experience. Every feature—from expenses receipt scanning, setting monthly budgets, multi-currency support to remittance optimization—comes from real challenges I face every day. The ability to understand where I stand financially, because, it was easy to fall into the overspending and credit card trap. With my financial economic background and experience in building AI products, I knew I could create something that not only tracked my finances but also to help others by providing actionable insights to help make better decisions.
The AI adoption. We build and train AI models into the core of our service to help our users and make their lives much easier. Thus, an AI that doesn't just analyze spending patterns but understands the cultural nuances and emotional factors influencing financial decisions.
We're not building another budgeting app. We're building financial infrastructure for a community that has been underserved for too long. Payogo is for the diaspora, by the diaspora, and we can't wait to share it with you.