Frequently asked questions

Many people each invest a modest amount in a company — from ETB 1,000 here — and each receives a real stake: shares, a loan note, or a revenue share. It is not a donation and not GoFundMe; it is regulated investing, with screening and escrow between you and the company.

Verified adults: Ethiopian residents, diaspora Ethiopians, and foreign nationals. Your classification sets your annual investment limits — retail investors are capped by law so nobody over-commits to high-risk private deals.

It varies by offering; impact loans start at ETB 1,000. Small tickets are deliberate — your first investment should be a decision, not a gamble with your savings.

Yes. Early-stage and SME investing is high-risk: a company can fail and your investment can go to zero. Never invest money you cannot afford to lose, and spread what you do invest. The platform screens for honesty, not for success — nobody can promise returns, and anyone who does is breaking the law.

Yes — every commitment has a cooling-off window during which you can cancel from your portfolio for a full refund, no questions asked.

Every investor is refunded from escrow, automatically. Refunds deliberately require no approval step, so no forgotten signature can trap your money.

The company repays on a published schedule into the escrow account, and the bank distributes each installment pro-rata directly to every investor's own account. You see received and upcoming installments in your portfolio.

Because the law — Article 70(2)(d) of Directive 980/2024 — forbids a crowdfunding intermediary from holding client money, and we think that is a feature: a platform that cannot touch your funds cannot misuse them. Money moves bank-to-escrow-to-company, and back.

Not yet. These are illiquid investments — expect to hold until the company repays, is acquired, or a secondary market exists under ECMA's future framework. Invest only what you can leave invested.

Ethiopian private limited companies with genuine operations and clean registration. Every application goes through eligibility screening, including a conflict-of-interest cross-check of your shareholders against the platform's own people.

A screening fee at application and a success fee only on funds actually raised. Final rates are published with the licensed pilot — and there are no hidden charges.

Honest disclosures before, honest updates after: use-of-funds reporting, campaign updates (moderated — no 'guaranteed returns' language survives review), and for debt raises, meeting your published repayment schedule.

Not yet — this is a demonstration deployment built to the licensing standard, and it says so on every page. No real securities are offered and payment rails run in sandbox. When the ECMA licence is granted, this answer changes — and only then.

Your identity documents and personal details are encrypted at the field level in our database — a stolen backup would contain ciphertext, not identities. Access is role-restricted and every privileged action lands in a tamper-evident audit log.

The structure is: an external escrow bank holds the money, two named officers must both approve any release, every attempted transaction is logged by law (Article 73), and the audit trail and ownership register are cryptographically tamper-evident — even a database administrator cannot silently rewrite them.

Never. The law requires neutrality: offerings are sortable only by neutral facts (newest, closing soon, amount raised, target). No 'featured deals', no rankings, no advice. Your decisions are yours — that is the deal.