01
Discovery
Inside the gold economy first.
Before writing code, we spent time with the refinery and banking teams to understand how gold was actually bought, weighed, vaulted, reconciled, and released.
Sanu.
Gold and silver,
held, audited, transferable.
In a single mobile app for African investors.
Film · 00:51
March 2023. Blinq.
01 · The brief
Gold, without the weight of owning it.
The vault, the audit, the bank wire, kept out of sight.
Context
Nigerian investors have always trusted gold, but the modern infrastructure for owning it was missing. Settlement took days, custody meant a safe deposit box, and there was no clean way to send a gram of metal to a sibling across the country.
Sanu wanted something that felt closer to a banking app than a brokerage. Kian Smith, the country's first licensed gold refiner, would underwrite the metal in their audited vaults. We had to make the product around it.
What we did
A consumer Flutter app for iOS and Android, a custody service that talks directly to the vault registry, an identity and KYC pipeline tuned for Nigerian documents, and a ledger system that moves grams between accounts in seconds.
Behind it all, a payments layer that accepts both bank to bank transfers and card payments, and converts holdings back to Naira on request.
02 · Approach
Four passes. From secure vault to customer pocket.
Duration
24 weeks to v1
02
Architecture
A ledger built around secure custody.
Every gram of gold in Sanu needed a clear source of truth. We designed a ledger system that mirrors vaulted holdings, records ownership changes, and supports reconciliation with refinery operations.
03
Product
Gold, made familiar.
Owning gold should feel as intuitive as using a banking app. We designed and built a mobile experience that made onboarding, verification, funding, buying, and transfers simple for everyday users.
04
Operate
Built to keep moving.
Launching was only the beginning. We continued shipping features, refining operations, supporting integrations, and helping Sanu evolve from product launch into a living financial platform.
Feature · Nº 01
Sanu Payments.
Buy gold by bank transfer or debit card, denominated in Naira, settled into a vault position the same day. Convert any holding back to Naira from the app, with the proceeds in your bank account before the next business hour.
Settlement
T+0 for transfers
Card payments settle to vault on confirmation. Bank to bank settle inside instantly
Bank transfer, paid into vault.
A virtual account number per user. Funds reconcile to a vault position the same day the wire lands.
Card payment for smaller buys.
Verve, Mastercard, Visa. Settled into vault on authorization, with the buyer holding the gold within seconds.
One-tap Naira liquidation.
Sell any portion of a holding into Nigerian Naira, at the day's quoted bid, into the user's nominated bank account.
Refreshed from the spot market and locked at the moment of purchase.
From the four tier-one banks down to microfinance partners and mobile money.
Small enough for a student saving plan. Large enough to be a bank-grade custody record.
Pickup / collection network
50+ partner branches
Vault · Kian Smith
Ikoyi, Lagos
Audited custody, 24h CCTV.
Branch
GTB Ikoyi
Branch
Union Bank, Ikoyi
Branch
Sterling Yaba
Branch
Access Lekki
Branch
Zenith VI
Feature · Nº 02
Pick it up, or vault it away.
Buy gold from a sofa. Collect a bar from the bank branch closest to home, or have it stored in a Kian Smith vault with an audited custody record. The decision can wait until the gold is already yours.
Branch pickup.
A QR receipt issued in the app. Tellers scan it, the gram weighs out, the user signs once.
Vault custody by Kian Smith.
Insured custody in licensed vaults. The user keeps the audit trail and a digital certificate of ownership.
Switch between modes any time.
A buyer can vault gold today, pick it up next week, and re-vault what is left, with the custody ledger keeping score.
Feature · Nº 03
Transfer gold, in seconds.
Logistics has always been gold's friction. We built a peer transfer system on top of the custody ledger so a gram of metal moves between Sanu accounts as fast as a chat message, with the audit trail intact.
Mean transfer time
1.4 s
Across 14,200 transfers, Q1 2026.
Sign
Face ID + Secure confirmation
Transfer
Gold moves instantly on Sanu's ledger
Receive
Recipient gets Sanu immediately
03 · Under the hood
How digital gold actually works.
Every customer balance is backed by real vaulted gold. Our systems keep product, operations, and custody in continuous sync, auditable to the gram.
Sanu Mobile App
Buy, hold, transfer and redeem gold — anytime, anywhere.
Single source of truth
Tracks every customer balance, ownership record, transaction and settlement in real time.
Ownership
Transactions
Balances
Settlement
History
Tools for the team
Everything our ops team needs to run daily operations and support customers.
Customer
Review Settlement
Workflows Support
Tools Internal
Approvals
Review Settlement
Workflows Support
Tools Internal
Approvals
Real gold. Real custody.
Integrated with trusted partners and systems that hold and protect the metal.
Vault
Records Bank
Movement Identity
Verification Audit
Reconciliation
Records Bank
Movement Identity
Verification Audit
Reconciliation
Built with
- Flutter
- Ruby on Rails
- Postgres
- Kian Smith Audit API
- Banking Rails
- KYC Providers
04 · Results
What the numbers do for a living.
Metrics window
Jan 2023 → Mar 2026
38 months, audited by Kian Smith.
₦
2
B+
Naira moved into gold and silver through Sanu since launch. A significant source of new retail capital into Nigerian precious metals.
0
+
Precious metal transactions cleared through the platform. Every record matches a vault entry on the Kian Smith side.
Customers still holding a position 12 months after their first buy.
Rolling availability for the consumer app and custody API.
From 2,140 ratings on the iOS and Google Play stores combined.
05 · In their words
Recorded, July 2025
You have all been kind of divine.
Grounded. The year giving multiplied.
An environmental advocacy summit and mobile app for Julia Jackson's Grounded Foundation. We launched the Grounded Summit website, the event app, and the brand it sits inside.
Read the case study