Family, on purpose
Launching in NigeriaMoney you promised to family, set aside and sent on time.
Black tax is the allowance to your mother, the school fees for your brother, the aunt you help each quarter. Most people carry it in their head and send it by hand. This gives it a pot of its own, a list of who it is for, and a record of what has actually gone out.
Launching in Nigeria first.
Nobody forgets the promise. They forget the transfer.
You said you would send it. You meant it. Then the month moved, the money was spent on something ordinary, and the transfer went out late, or short, or twice.
Not because you are careless. Because nothing in your bank account knows the difference between rent, lunch and your mother’s allowance.
- Nothing sets the money aside
- Nothing records what was promised against what was sent
- Nothing repeats without being remembered
- Nothing tells a family obligation apart from any other transfer
Four things an obligation has never had.
01
A pot
Money set aside from everyday spending, one per currency. It is yours, it sits in your name, and it is not part of what you spend on a Tuesday. It is funded from your main account and from nothing else.
02
Your people
The list. A parent, a sibling, an aunt, a dependent — and what you promised each of them, as a number and a rhythm. Monthly, weekly, quarterly, annually, or nothing fixed at all when the arrangement is occasional.
03
Sending
By hand when you want to, and on a schedule that does not need reminding. The 1st arrives whether or not you remembered it, and the pot pays without asking you to do anything that morning.
04
A record
What was promised, what was sent, what was skipped and why. Per person and in total. Complete enough to answer a question from your own family without having to remember the answer.
The app itself
This is what it looks like on the phone.
Four screens, taken from the built app. Amounts in naira, plain words, nothing you have to decode.
The pot
What is set aside, and what is still to go this month.
The people
Everyone on the list, and what each of them was promised.
Schedules
The standing instruction, and every run it has already made.
Activity
Sent, skipped, short — kept in plain language.
The distinction
A promise and an instruction are different things.
A pledge is what you told your mother she can count on. A schedule is the standing instruction that actually moves the money. Most apps collapse the two, and then changing one quietly changes the other. This one keeps them apart, on purpose.
A pledge
A schedule
Change a pledge and the app tells you the schedule no longer matches. It offers to update it. It never does it for you.
Two numbers, and the space between them.
What you promised this month. What has actually gone out. The difference is a subtraction, not a verdict — there are still days left in the month.
- Promised this month
- ₦95,000.00
- Sent this month
- ₦50,000.00
- Still to go
- ₦45,000.00
with 12 days left in the month
Giving
You have a pot. You listed your people. You promised each of them something. Money leaves on the day it should.
You see everything: the pot, every person, every run, every ask.
Receiving
Someone listed you. You can see what they promised you — and only that. You can ask, when you need to.
You see one arrangement. Not their balance, not their other people, not their schedules. Nothing else.
Most people are both. A daughter supporting her mother, supported by her brother.
The 1st arrives whether or not you remembered it.
A schedule fires. The pot pays. Everyone on that schedule gets what they were promised, and every one of them gets a record — including the months when nothing was due.
And when the pot is short, the app does the thing that costs you least dignity: it pays nobody, tells you exactly why, and retries. Three of five relatives paid is worse than a clean retry.
The other direction
A way to ask that is not a phone call.
School fees came early. A hospital bill. Something outside the arrangement. Your aunt can ask, in the app, for a specific amount and a reason — and you can say yes or no without a conversation neither of you wanted to have.
Approved and paid are two different states, and you will always see which one you are looking at.
Things it does not do.
Named here rather than discovered later.
- No currency conversion
- No sending outside BlackTax
- No lending, no IOUs
- No group pots or rotating savings
- Nothing to do with a revenue authority
A pot and its people are one currency. The same relative in two currencies is two arrangements.
A person needs an account. This does not reach a bank you nominate.
Nothing tracks what anyone owes back. It is not a debt product.
That is a different thing and it is not this.
Despite the name.
Set it aside. Send it on time. Keep the record.
BlackTax is ready. Download it for iOS or Android and send your first pledge today.