Overview

Wallets provide a simple way to show your customers their balances with your organization. With wallets, you don't need to submit the KYC details of your customer. All the funds received from all customers are held in your Main Balance and you use the Wallet API to create wallets that show customers how much they have with you.

With wallets, you can provide alternative ways of funding beyond just bank transfers. Other methods such as Crypto, Card, Direct Debit, etc could also work.

Virtual Accounts vs Wallets

At Bloc, there's an important difference between a virtual account and a wallet.

A virtual account can send and receive money, and hold balances; a wallet can't. A wallet is simply a store of value for a customer — you cannot hold actual money inside a wallet.

Here's an example of how it works.

With virtual accounts, a company can create and issue account numbers to its users. The accounts are owned by Banc Corp, and the users are required to complete their KYC information to be able to properly use the accounts well. All money received by the users are held in their respective accounts independent of each other.

With wallets, a company can create wallets for its users. However, these wallets do not need to have account numbers and the users do not need to complete their KYC information to own a wallet. All money received is settled in a single account balance, and the wallet system lets the user know how much of their money is held in the balance.

Here's a table detailing the differences between virtual accounts and wallets in Bloc:

Virtual Accounts	Wallets
Account holders are required to complete their KYC.	Wallet owners do not need to complete or submit their KYC
Account details are automatically created for the account holder.	They do not need bank account details.
Can only be funded via bank transfer.	Can be funded via card, bank transfer, and many other payment methods. However, Bloc only supports bank transfer as a funding method currently.
Balances of account holders are held independently of each other	Balances of wallet owners are held in a single account balance.
Stamp duty is charged on deposits of over NGN 10,000	There is no stamp duty charged on deposits over NGN 10,000

Real-life example of how Wallets work

Nkechi is the founder of a new cooperative society at the Tradefair market. This cooperative now has 4 members — Ayo, Peter, Mary, and Zainab. At the end of the week, Nkechi and Ayo agree to deposit NGN 10,000 each; Peter and Zainab choose to deposit NGN 5,000 each, while Mary deposits NGN 4,000.

At the end of the first week, everyone deposits their cash with Nkechi. Nkechi has a total of NGN 34,000 with her. By the end of the first month, Nkechi was holding a total of NGN 136,000.

To make sure that she didn't get confused, Nkechi kept a register where she noted how much each person deposited per week and how much in total each person had with her. The table looked like this:

Name	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	Total
Nkechi	10,000	10,000	10,000	10,000	40,000
Ayo	10,000	10,000	10,000	10,000	40,000
Peter	5,000	5,000	5,000	5,000	20,000
Mary	4,000	4,000	4,000	4,000	16,000
Zainab	5,000	5,000	5,000	5,000	20,000
				TOTAL	136,000

Your organization is the Cooperative, and your Main Balance serves as the bank account where all of the funds are settled cumulatively. The table above that briefly shows the deposit history of each person and their updated balance is referred to as Wallets.

If anyone chooses to withdraw their cash, they're withdrawing from the total stash of NGN 136,000 with Nkechi, and then Nkechi is updating her "table" to show that Person A withdrew Amount X, and the remaining balance is Amount Y.

Compared to virtual accounts, wallets give you the ability to show your customers how much of their money is being held with you. With virtual accounts, their money are held independent of other customers in your organizations (they are not accumulated in one single account).