Meda: The Ethiopian Super App for Chat, Banking and Commerce

Pioneering the market with our in-house Super App, featuring secure chat, integrated financial services, and a scalable microservice architecture.
Client

One App, Limitless Possibilities

The Challange

Users in Ethiopia faced app overload and friction across services—separate tools for chatting, paying, ordering, and daily life tasks led to confusion, inefficiency, and a fragmented digital experience.

Our Solution

A cross-platform super app for iOS, Android, and Web that merges mobile banking, messaging, and a mini-app marketplace. Key features include seamless money transfers inside chats, service payments, voice/video calling, microservices backend, and secure, high-speed communication via MTProto v2.

The Impact

Meda Chat rapidly grew to 200,000+ users, supporting over 50M messages/sec. It became a go-to platform for social, financial, and lifestyle needs in Ethiopia—earning a reputation as “Ethiopia’s WeChat.”

The Vision Messaging Meets Money Ethiopia’s Super App Revolution

Meda Chat was envisioned as a unifying digital experience—a platform as fluid and ubiquitous as conversation itself. Inspired by the impact of WeChat in China, 360Ground designed Meda Chat to centralize social messaging, mobile banking, mini-apps, and commerce in a single, intuitive interface.

The goal: Make life easier for everyone—from students and entrepreneurs to banks and event organizers—by putting social interaction, financial access, and daily services in one place.

The Challenge Fragmentation, Inconvenience & App Fatigue

  • Scattered Services Users had to juggle multiple apps for chat, payments, bills, and service ordering.
  • No Financial Context in Messaging Money transfers required separate apps with clunky flows.
  • Poor Scalability Traditional architectures couldn’t support real-time financial operations or millions of users.
  • Limited Customization & Extensibility Integration with third parties was painful and error-prone.

Our Solution A Full-Stack Super App with High-Speed Messaging & Commerce

Design & Prototype
  • Designed UI for native iOS, Android, and Web—tailored for Ethiopian UX expectations.
  • Created JSON-based schema language for backend extensibility.
  • Ran click-through and real-world tests on core features: chat-payments, mini-apps, mobile banking.
  • Cross-platform SDKs and reusable runtime: iOS App, Android App, Web App, plus SDKs for integration.
  • MTProto v2 messaging protocol: Real-time messaging with minimal latency and max security.
  • Server in Scala + AKKA, enabling 50M msg/sec and 2.5M modules per GB.
  • Configured:
      • Push Notifications (iOS, Android)
      • Secure File Transfer
      • Voice & Video Call Support
      • Load Balancing & SSL Security
      • Activation via SMS + OTP
  • Real-time reporting tools: system health, user behavior, traffic trends, usage stats.
  • Scorecards and motion charts visualize trends, load status, and data patterns.

The Impact From Messages to Market—One App to Rule Them All

Meda unified chat, finance, and services—onboarding 200K+ users with high engagement, real-time scale, and smart, personalized experiences.

User Adoption & Satisfaction

  • 200,000+ users onboarded with active daily engagement.
  • Over 80% of users used Meda Chat daily for both financial and social tasks.
  • NPS scores rose significantly within months of launch.

Platform Performance & Scalability

  • MTProto + AKKA server architecture supports 50M+ msgs/sec with low memory load.
  • Real-time backend scales horizontally, enabling thousands of mini-app services.

Service Unification

  • In-chat financial actions: send/request money, pay bills, buy airtime or event tickets—all from the conversation screen.
  • Dozens of mini-apps, including taxis, shopping, government services, and dating, available in one tap.

 Data Intelligence

  • Big Data processing framework analyzes behavior across services, enabling predictive insights and personalization.

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