Server-side math, always
If a borrower can mutate the number on their screen and underpay, that’s a bug. Repayment totals, interest, fees — all computed on Netlify Functions against Firestore.
about · one founder · Lagos
Built in Lagos for my own loan book first
A one-founder project that grew into a platform Nigerian lenders trust with real naira.
The story
I was tracking loans in a spreadsheet. So I built this
I’m Stephen Bankole. I’m based in Lagos. I lend a bit, in naira, to people I know — market traders, small business owners, friends working salary-to-salary. For a long time I tracked it in a spreadsheet. Repayments came in via bank transfer and I would copy them across by hand.
The spreadsheet broke down somewhere around the twelfth borrower. I missed a repayment. I double-counted a credit. I disbursed twice to the same person because I had two browser tabs open. So I sat down to build the smallest version of a real lending workspace I could trust.
I built YT Finance for my own loan book first. Then friends asked. Then they kept asking.
The first version was Firebase Auth, Firestore, and a Netlify Function that called Flutterwave Transfers. It worked. It disbursed in thirty seconds. It survived me clicking the disburse button twice because the ledger had a deterministic ID and the second click became a no-op.
That deterministic-ID idea became the through-line. Every wallet operation, every repayment credit, every refund — all anchored to a doc ID we can compute, so retries are safe and webhook replays don’t double-count. The product is mostly an accumulation of those anchors, glued together with OTPs and a heartbeat that scans for silent failures every five minutes.
YT Finance isn’t for everyone. If you’re a microfinance bank with a hundred staff and a CBN licence, you probably want Lendsqr. If you need credit-decisioning models, you want Indicina. YT Finance is for the lender who wants to issue real naira loans this afternoon, against a money path that won’t double-debit when Flutterwave hiccups.
Founded 2024 · Lagos · Solo, for now
What it’s for, who it’s not
One paragraph
YT Finance is for the Nigerian lender who wants to issue real naira loans today, against a hardened money path, without writing the Flutterwave integration themselves. It’s not for retail consumer credit at scale, it’s not a decisioning engine, and it doesn’t replace your CBN licence. If you’re lending to people you know — or a few thousand of them — and you want the boring parts done correctly, YT Finance is the product I built for you.
How I build
Three rules
Deterministic anchors
Every wallet operation has a doc ID I can compute from inputs. Webhooks replay safely. Retries don’t double-debit. The ledger never lies because of a network blip.
Surface silent failures
A failure I don’t see is a failure I can’t fix. The heartbeat sentinel runs every five minutes and posts incidents to the admin page before a borrower has to call.
Team
One person, for now
Stephen Bankole
Founder · Lagos
Writes the code, runs the money path, replies to support. Reachable at stephen@ytfinancehq.com.
Lend with me
Create a lender account. Configure a loan product. Run KYC on your first borrower. If something breaks, email me directly. I read every message.