Fixing Ethiopia’s Payment Systems to Work for People

How Flamingo UPI and Flamingo Merchant Were Built for Users — Not Just Institutions?

Let me tell you a true story.
Ahmed, a hardworking salesman in Dire Dawa, lost two months’ worth of salary. Not because he failed to sell. Not because he misbehaved. But because when his customer paid through a mobile wallet, the money didn’t show up in the app his boss used. No notification. No receipt. No proof. Ahmed couldn’t verify the payment, and his boss couldn't verify the trust. Guess who paid the price? Ahmed did.

Now, take another case — a small electronics seller in Addis Ababa. He sold goods worth 12,000 birr to a customer. That customer turned out to be from the Revenue Office. But in the rush of business, our friend forgot to issue a receipt. It didn’t matter that he paid his taxes or ran an honest shop. In the eyes of the law, the transaction didn’t exist. He was jailed for two years. His wife left him. His shop never reopened.

These aren’t just sad stories — they’re system failures. Cracks. Gaps. Digital chaos wrapped in beautiful logos and billboards. And in that chaos, real people suffer.

That’s why we built Flamingo.

A Simple Idea That Grew Wings

Flamingo started with one big question:

“What if people didn’t have to download ten different banking apps to manage one life?”

So we built Flamingo UPI — Ethiopia’s Unified Payment Interface. One app. One login. Every account — bank, wallet, microfinance — in one place.

You don’t have to remember which bank has your balance. You just log in with your phone number, and Flamingo shows you the whole picture. You scan one QR code, and Flamingo handles the rest — no more “which app should I use to pay you?” confusion.

It’s the user-first layer Ethiopia’s financial ecosystem never had.

But Then We Met Ahmed
We realized our work wasn’t done. So we built Flamingo Merchant — an app for Ethiopia’s salespeople, shop owners, and growing businesses.

With Flamingo Merchant:

• Each salesperson gets a real-time view of whether a payment has landed — even if it's sent to the boss's account.
• Business owners get one dashboard for all their employees, branches, and payments.
• Salespeople get peace of mind. Bosses get visibility. Everyone gets trust.
• And the beauty? One secure, interoperable QR code.
• No more “which wallet do you use?”
• No more guessing. No more salary cuts for technical confusion.

For Users, Not Just Institutions

For years, digital finance in Ethiopia was built top-down. Institutions chose what users got. But Flamingo was built the other way around — bottom-up. From Ahmed’s story. From that jailed shopkeeper. From thousands of confused customers and salespeople just trying to do the right thing.

We don’t want to own Flamingo. We want EthSwitch, the national switch, to run it — because Ethiopia needs fairness, trust, and neutrality in its digital future.

And yes — we’re still early. Flamingo UPI and Flamingo Merchant are both fully built and tested. All we need now is the final national integration.

What Happens Next?

We’re ready to plug Flamingo into Ethiopia’s financial grid. We’re ready to serve every bank, PSP, and business — not by replacing them, but by connecting them, simplifying them.

And we’re doing it for the Ahmeds of this country.

Because they deserve systems that work.