New money agents where people already gather

Grace leads agent growth at a mobile money company in Kigali. Its agents are the corner shops where people put cash in and take it out. She picks new agent spots from a paper map and the sales team’s hunches. Some new agents open beside three others and starve. Meanwhile busy markets and bus parks have none, and people walk twenty minutes to send money home. With xMap Flows, Grace built Periscope. On the first Monday of each month, across Kigali, Periscope finds the markets and bus stations, finds the company’s nearest agent to each, keeps the ones with no agent within a kilometre, and draws the gaps on a map for the sales team. This month, Periscope found fourteen markets and bus parks with no agent within a kilometre, including busy stops near Nyabugogo. Grace signed eight new agents there in a fortnight, and the first ones already take hundreds of payments a day. Grace stopped guessing where people need money. Now she goes where they already are.

The story in words