Intelligent payment layer for digital Ethiopia

Tap.Paid.Done.

Sub-2-second proximity handshakes turn any checkout into a one-tap payment. No app for your customers to download — the wallet they already trust opens pre-filled — with multi-rail settlement across EthioPay-IPS, Telebirr and CBE Birr.

Explore Architecture

Sub-2s: Initiation
Zero: Float custody
<200 ETB: Deployment cost

2Pay · Live demo · FUEL Simulated

Bole Road Fuel
Pump 3

TAP HERE

NTAG216 · passive

Payer wallet

Awaiting rail…

Merchant node

Awaiting rail…

Tag Handshake
~40 ms
Token Dispatch
~220 ms
Wallet Launch
~840 ms
Dual Confirm
~1.4 s

Simulated system latency. PIN / biometric entry happens inside the payer's own wallet app.

EthioPay-IPSETHQRTelebirrM-PESACBE BirrCBEBirr PlusAwash BirrCBE Mobile BankingCBE SuperappBoA MobileApollo AppHIBIR Mobile BankingZemen Mobile BankingWegagen MobileCoopAppHost Card Emulation (HCE)NTAG216 ISO 14443AAndroid App LinksiOS Universal LinksMinistry of Revenues Fiscal Protocol

Architecture · Pillar 01

Dual acceptance. A ladder that never leaves the customer stranded.

Three rungs, one payload. If the tap isn't possible, the next rung takes over in the same checkout — degrading gracefully instead of failing.

Rung 1 · Primary

Bi-directional HCE Tap

Turn standard Android phones into payment nodes with zero terminal capex. Host Card Emulation broadcasts a single-use signed token over NFC — the customer taps, their wallet opens.

NFC · <2 s

Rung 2 · Secondary

Dynamic ETHQR Fallback

Server-generated, single-use token on screen for customer handsets without NFC. Same payload, same wallet hand-off, no static code to photograph or swap.

ETHQR · dynamic

Rung 3 · Tertiary

Sub-200 ETB Passive Stands

Locally assembled, weather-proof NTAG216 cards for forecourts and high-volume counters. No battery, no network, no screen — nothing to charge, patch or steal.

NTAG216 · <200 ETB

Native NFC tap Dynamic ETHQR Passive stand QR

One tap, four hand-offs

01 · Node
HCE phone or passive tag
A merchant Android phone emulates a smart card; a passive stand carries a write-locked NDEF record.
02 · Token
Single-use, signed
Every handshake carries a fresh signed token bound to merchant, amount and node — replay-proof.
03 · Wallet
The payer's own app
Telebirr, CBE Birr or any EthioPay-IPS app opens via App Links / Universal Links, pre-filled.
04 · Rail
National settlement
Funds move payer-to-merchant on the regulated rail. 2Pay never touches, holds or moves them.

The Inheritance Doctrine

Authorization ends where the customer already trusts it.

2Pay never builds its own authentication. The payment is authorised inside the payer's bank or wallet app — Telebirr, CBE Birr, EthioPay-IPS — so every PIN policy and CDCVM biometric upgrade those apps ship is inherited instantly, with nothing for merchants to re-certify.

Decoupled Confirmation

The rail tells the merchant — not the customer's screen.

Confirmation arrives independently on both terminals, straight from the rail, with an audible Amharic chime. A screenshot of a “success” screen can't fake a rail event, which structurally defeats screenshot fraud.

ተከፍሏል

Why a neutral layer matters: 2Pay holds no float, custodies no customer funds and issues no wallets. That means faster merchant rollouts, a lighter regulatory surface and zero new counterparty risk for customers.

Architecture · Pillar 02 · New

Team Nodes: one till, every attendant accountable.

For high-throughput hospitality and retail, one master settlement account provisions a sub-node for every member of staff — with tips separated and attributed automatically.

01 · Master
Cashier master account
One settlement account. Provisions, suspends and audits every sub-node.
02 · Sub-nodes
Dynamic attendant nodes · 1…N
- #01
- #02
- #03
- #04
- +N
03 · Customer
Single-tap flow
Bill + tip travel in one token. One tap, one wallet confirmation.
04 · Confirm
Dual push + tip ledger
Both terminals chime ተከፍሏል; the tip posts to the attendant's ledger.

No more personal transfers

Staff stop collecting on personal bank or wallet accounts. Every birr lands in the single master settlement account — closing the off-book channel that hides revenue from the tax base.

Automatic tip separation

The tip is split from the bill at the moment of payment and credited to the serving attendant's ledger — transparent for staff, clean for the owner's books.

Staff attribution

Each attendant is a provisioned sub-node under the cashier's master account, so every sale and tip is attributed to a named person — no shared tag, no disputes.

Tip ledger

Illustrative · ETB

Attendant	Bill	Tip
#03 DawitT12	750	50
#04 TigistT07	1,240	120
#01 SelamT03	415	35
Master settlement	2,405	205

Example: 750 ETB bill → 800 ETB paid → 50 ETB tip allocated to the serving attendant.

Hardware & Forecourt Engineering

A chip, a card, and nothing to break.

Form Factor B is the entire device 2Pay installs where phones can't be trusted with the job: unattended lanes, high-wear counters and open forecourts. No screen, no battery, no network, no updates.

NTAG216 · ISO 14443A

The tag is the terminal. A passive card carries the merchant's signed payment record. Every modern phone reads it natively. The record is write-locked, so it can't be re-written in place — and the watchdog flags any stand that gets swapped.

Because it's passive, the economics invert: a deployment costs a fraction of a POS terminal, installs in minutes without a technician, and keeps working through power cuts and network outages.

Landed cost: < 200 ETB · locally fabricated
Chip: NFC NTAG216 · high-capacity
Standard: ISO/IEC 14443A
Power: None · zero battery
Network: None · zero dependency
NDEF record: Write-locked
Build: Weather-proof · counter & forecourt

Case study · Fuel forecourts

From 25 to 60 cars an hour.

At the pump, the bottleneck isn't fuelling — it's the walk to the till, the cash count and the QR that won't scan in glare. A passive stand at every pump lets the attendant stay at the vehicle and clears the lane the moment the tap lands.

Cash + till walk25 cars / hr

2Pay tap at the pump60 cars / hr

Forecourt throughput · design target for pilot lanes+140%

Vertical plans

Built for queues, fleets, forecourts — and borders.

2Pay targets high-throughput, repeat-visit businesses where every saved second compounds. We start at the fuel forecourt, extend across Ethiopia's busiest counters, then carry the same layer along African trade corridors.

Beachhead

Fuel station chains

A node at every pump. Digital payment is already mandatory at the forecourt, so a slow checkout is lost volume. Attendants stay at the vehicle and every pump reconciles per shift. One chain agreement brings 50–100+ stations.

PER-TAP · SITE DEPLOYMENT

Ride-hailing & transit fleets

A tap node on every seat-back and dashboard. Passengers pay before the door opens; drivers stop handling cash and stop waiting on scans.

PER-TAP · FLEET ROLLOUT

Supermarkets & retail groups

Lane-level nodes that clear checkout queues faster than cash counting or QR framing — with every lane reporting into one group dashboard.

PER-TAP · LANE DEPLOYMENT

Restaurants & hospitality

Team nodes give every attendant their own sub-node under one master account, with automatic tip separation and no personal transfers.

PER-TAP · ATTENDANT NODES

Pharmacy franchises

Counter nodes for fast, hygienic, no-contact payment — and franchise-wide visibility of every branch's takings in real time.

PER-TAP · FRANCHISE ROLLOUT

AfCFTA corridor

Logistics & corridor nodes

Tap-to-pay at weighbridges, dry-port gates and truck stops on the Djibouti–Addis corridor, starting domestically in ETB with receipts for every payment.

PER-TAP · CORRIDOR NODES

Vertical · Pan-AfricanFuture vertical · Version 1.0 · Oct 2026

2Pay × AfCFTA: closing the last meter of cross-border trade

A neutral physical-acceptance layer for African trade corridors — expanding country by country through licensed local partners.

AfCFTA and the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) are building the legal and settlement layers of continental trade. The last meter is still cash: the border market stall, the levy desk, the weighbridge. 2Pay is the neutral physical-acceptance and proof-of-payment layer at that counter — the rails are built; the counter is not.

50–60%: of intra-African trade is carried by unregistered traders or firms (World Bank, via UNDP)
Oct 2025: Ethiopia began trading under the AfCFTA Guided Trade Initiative
Dec 2025: Ethiopia–Kenya Simplified Trade Regime signed at Moyale
Oct 2026: The National Bank of Ethiopia joined PAPSS, the continental settlement system. Banks and licensed payment companies must still connect before customers can use it.

Funds path

1PayerNative bank or wallet app, opened by the tap
22Pay nodeMerchant phone (HCE) or NTAG216 stand
3OrchestrationRoute, quote display, Trade Receipt
4Licensed railDomestic: EthSwitch IPS. Cross-border: PAPSS, via a licensed participant
5MerchantBank or wallet account of the receiver

Funds go payer → licensed rail → merchant. They never touch 2Pay: zero float, zero credentials.

Two settlement lanes, one tap

Domestic laneEthSwitch IPS

Ethiopia's inland real-time rail. Every ETB tap settles here, at every Ethiopian counter — including the Ethiopian side of border posts and the logistics nodes along the corridors. It is a national rail, not a cross-border one.

Cross-border lanePAPSS

The continental settlement system, which the National Bank of Ethiopia joined in October 2026. 2Pay never joins as a participant: cross-border payments route through licensed banks and wallets that are connected.

Four non-negotiables

Never holds funds or float
Never deals or converts foreign exchange
Never becomes a PAPSS participant
Never stores payer credentials

Planning view drawn from the 2Pay AfCFTA Strategy v1.0. Market facts reflect public information as of 16 October 2026. Corridor designs, timelines and targets are planning assumptions, not commitments or observed results — 2Pay has not yet operated at an international border.

Pragmatic Intelligence & Security

An AI watchdog that earns its keep.

AI is not the product. Deterministic rules do the detecting, and one small batched call per merchant each night does the writing — no consumer-facing AI, and no real-time inference whose cost scales with volume.

Your books, closed before you wake up.

One batched call per merchant each night turns the ledger into a short Amharic summary — takings, transaction count, week-on-week change, busiest hour and any anomalies that were resolved. It replaces 45–90 minutes of nightly SMS reconciliation.

Delivered in the merchant app or on Telegram. Marginal AI cost per merchant is a fraction of a US cent a day.

የዕለት ሪፖርትDaily brief · 22:00

የዛሬ ሽያጭ፦ 48,250 ብር
Today's sales: 48,250 birr
ከትናንት ጋር ሲነጻጸር በ12% ጨምሯል
Up 12% compared with yesterday
ከፍተኛ ሽያጭ የተመዘገበው በምሳ ሰዓት አካባቢ ነው
Busiest period: around lunchtime
ጠቅላላ ቲፕ፦ 2,140 ብር
Total tips: 2,140 birr
የተፈቱ ማንቂያዎች፦ 2
Resolved alerts: 2
ትኩረት የሚሻ፦ አንድ ያልተለመደ ክፍያ ተገኝቷል
Needs attention: one unusual payment detected

Illustrative sample

Security & trust, by construction

Every layer assumes someone will try to cheat. Independent penetration testing and a yearly security assessment are planned, with regulated data hosted in-country.

Device attestation
Merchant HCE nodes are gated by Google Play Integrity before any request is issued.
Single-use requests
Time-bound, single-use tokens. A replayed or copied request is rejected.
Write-locked stands
Stand tags can't be rewritten. Repeated failed validations at one stand raise a swap alert.
No credentials held
2Pay stores no PINs, passwords or card data. Authorization stays in the payer's wallet.
Rail-side confirmation
Settlement is confirmed from rail callbacks, defeating screenshot and forwarded-SMS fraud.
Tenant isolation
Row-level security in PostgreSQL separates every merchant's data from every other's.

Documentation & API

Build on the neutral layer.

2Pay owns the acceptance experience and inherits authorization and settlement from licensed rails. The docs explain how the pieces connect — for rail operators, POS and ECR vendors, and fleet systems.

Rail integrationHow a tap resolves to the payer's own wallet over EthioPay-IPS, ETHQR, Telebirr and CBE Birr — and how the rail's confirmation comes back.

Requests & webhooksCreate single-use payment requests and receive signed, rail-side confirmation events, including attendant and tip attribution.

ECR & POS middlewareEmbed 2Pay in the till so every confirmed tap is tied to a fiscal receipt and reconciled per shift.

Create a team-node request · indicative

POST /v1/requests
{
  "merchant_id": "mer_habesha_grill",
  "node_id": "node_table_12",
  "attendant_id": "att_03",
  "amount": "750.00",
  "tip": "50.00",
  "currency": "ETB",
  "ttl_seconds": 90
}

// 201 Created
{
  "id": "req_6T5D33",
  "status": "created",
  "total": "800.00",
  "expires_at": "2026-10-14T09:31:30Z"
}

API preview. Final schemas and sandbox credentials are shared with onboarded integration partners.

Read the docs

Get started

Two ways in.

Merchant & fleet pilots

We deploy HCE nodes or passive stands, wire up your master dashboard and measure the difference at your busiest sites — fuel forecourts, retail checkout lanes or an entire vehicle fleet.

Forecourt pump-lane deployments
Retail & supermarket lane rollouts
Ride-hailing and transit fleet programmes
Restaurant team nodes with tip ledgers

Back the payment layer

2Pay is raising a pre-seed round to take the tap layer from working prototype to deployed fleets and forecourts.

Round size: $350,000
Equity offered: 20%
Pre-money valuation: $1,400,000
Post-money valuation: $1,750,000
Entry ticket: $17,500 per 1%

Stage-gated execution

1Gate G1
1,000 live nodes
HCE and passive nodes in daily merchant use across fuel, retail and hospitality lanes, proving deployment repeatability.
2Gate G2
1M transactions
One million confirmed taps settled across the national rails, establishing reliability, latency and fraud-rule baselines.
3Gate G3
Anchor fuel contracts
Signed forecourt agreements with anchor fuel operators to scale from pilot sites to network-wide rollout.

Information on this page is a summary for prospective investors and is not an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities. Any offering is made only through the funding memorandum, under NDA.