Meru

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Global finances for freelancers, content creators and remote workers from emerging markets, starting in LATAM

As a freelancer from emerging markets, getting paid by international clients is a pain

• Need to use intermediary or multiple platforms to receive payments and exchange it to local currency, losing money in each transaction
• The most common method used is PayPal which charges high fees and exchange to local currency is hard, slow and expensive
• Billing an international client with a different currency isn’t easy and could be confusing
• Freelancers don’t have a organized financial life

Meru solves this problem

• Have a USD bank account that can connect to freelancers platforms such as UpWork, Workana, Deel, etc, to receive payments from there.
• Save money in a strongest currency (USD)
• Create invoices and payments links to receive payments from international clients through multiple payments methods.
• Withdraw money to local bank accounts in local currency
• Pay in local and online stores through a debit virtual/physical card
• Withdraw money in cash around the globe thanks our partnership with Moneygram

Product

Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.getmeru.app&hl=es&gl=CO

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/meru-ahorra-en-d%C3%B3lares/id1636697895

Meru Stack

• Backend: NodeJS, Python and Rust
• Frontend: �- Mobile: Flutter

- Web: ReactJS + VueJS

• AWS and Azure Cloud providers - Microservices architecture
• Event driven approach SNS, SQS
• Docker, Kuberenetes

Challenges faced during development

• Our team was fullstack developers without any experience developing in blockchain. Stellar helps
• When we started there wasn’t enough resources (libraries, etc.)
• Understanding the SEPs
• Trying to connect to established anchors. We finally built our own anchors
• Small team
• Developing non custodial solution was hard. Fee Bumping, XLM sponsorship

Meru + DeFi, why?

• Give to our users the possibility to generate yield from their savings.
• Soroban, the best solution for us. Built on Stellar, community, etc.

Meru + Defi, How?

• Adding access to BLEND protocol from our app in a easy way
• Why BLEND? Audit. We know the developers, etc
• Define the RPC.
• Used stellar_flutter_sdk https://github.com/Soneso/stellar_flutter_sdk
• Used blend-sdk-js https://github.com/blend-capital/blend-sdk-js
• We studied the blend-ui https://github.com/blend-capital/blend-ui to understand how work with it from Javascript

Challenges?

• There was a kind of bug in the stellar_flutter_sdk regarding some keys that was coming in capitalize way. We forked the code and fixed it.
• Understanding the basics of BLEND. We needed to understand it in order to explain to our non crypto savvy users
• Our wallet sponsor XLM, fee bumping, and SEP30 key recovering, so we needed to adapt the concept to our approach.

Result

Team

Carlos Neira

CEO

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IT Industry Veteran (+30 years) International Biz Dev

https://www.linkedin.com/in/amilcar-jose-erazo-perdomo-721a1a65/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlos-neira-a1a44548/

Yoser Rodriguez

COO

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+5 years of experience in

remittances business

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoser-rodriguez-740521178