Meet Bitspenda: The Mini App Making Bitcoin Useful for Ghana's Diaspora

Sending money home to Ghana meant fees, delays, and middlemen taking a cut. Bright Kportiklah, a Ghanaian bitcoin developer, decided that was a solvable problem and solved it with bitcoin.

The result is Bitspenda. And Fedi users can add it as a Mini App today.

What Bitspenda Solves

Bitcoin communities in Ghana are active and growing, but for a long time, a stubborn disconnect held them back. People holding bitcoin couldn't easily use it in everyday life. Almost no merchants accepted it directly. Families abroad that wanted to send bitcoin home had no clean path to do it. The Ghanaian diaspora was stuck choosing between slow bank wires and remittance services that took a cut before a single cedi arrived.

Kportiklah didn't wait for merchant adoption to catch up. He built a bridge straight into the Mobile Money infrastructure that millions of Ghanaians already use every day.

"Bitcoin was growing fast in Ghana, but people couldn't actually use it in their daily lives,” said Bright Kportiklah, Founder of Bitspenda. “I didn't want to wait for merchants to catch up. I wanted to connect bitcoin directly to the infrastructure people already trust".

How It Works

The user enters a recipient's Mobile Money number and Bitspenda generates a Lightning invoice. The users pay it from their Fedi wallet. Within seconds, the recipient's Mobile Money account reflects the amount in Ghanaian cedis.

The person receiving it needs no bitcoin wallet, no Lightning knowledge, and no new app. They receive money exactly the way they always have just faster, and from further away. 

Bitspenda currently supports Ghana, with Kenya, Nigeria, Togo, and more countries coming soon.

How to Add Bitspenda to Your Fedi Wallet

Step 1: Tap the Mini Apps button at the bottom-right of your Fedi screen.

Step 2: Tap the plus sign (+) at the top right.

Step 3: Select "Add from Catalog", then search for "Bitspenda" in the search bar and tap "Add."

How to Send Mobile Money Using Bitspenda

Step 1: Open the Bitspenda mini app.

Step 2: Enter the recipient's Mobile Money number and the amount.

Step 3: Copy and then pay the Lightning invoice from your Fedi wallet, and the recipient receives local currency within seconds.

Bright Kportiklah built Bitspenda because he saw what bitcoin could do for his community and didn't stop there. He also runs College BTC, a program training Ghanaian youth in bitcoin development, and serves as technical advisor for Bitcoin Dua, a bitcoin circular economy in southeastern Ghana. Bitspenda is one piece of a much bigger vision: making bitcoin genuinely useful across Africa, in over a dozen countries, for people who simply need money to move.