Kova

Organisations receive money through bank transfers, cash records, and payment links while the context lives in spreadsheets and WhatsApp. Staff must connect each payment to the right person, work out what is still owed, and follow up without losing the history.

The product starts with a daily operational problem: knowing who paid and what happens next. Keeping existing bank accounts and WhatsApp habits lowers the work of getting started. The harder design decisions concern uncertain matches, shared family payments, permissions, and when AI must leave the decision to a person.

Built Kova from a WhatsApp finance tool into an integrated financial operations platform spanning onboarding, collections, reconciliation, household accounts, AI assistance, savings, and financing workflows. A shared business engine connects the dashboard, conversations, payment integrations, and financial history.

A finance platform with Kova Ledger for staff, Kova Assistant for questions and confirmed actions, WhatsApp for households, Kova Trust for behavioural history, and Kova Capital for affordability, financing offers, and repayment workflows.

Kova is a financial operations and credit infrastructure platform connecting organisations, households, and community networks. One shared engine supports school fees, savings groups, rent collection, clinic bills, and employer-funded advances. Kova Ledger brings payment records, reconciliation, instalment plans, expenses, and account history into one workspace. Kova Assistant supports questions and reviewed actions across the dashboard and WhatsApp. Kova Trust connects payment behaviour and community signals to an explainable financial history, while Kova Capital supports affordability checks, financing offers, and repayment workflows. As Head of Product & Technology, I own product direction and technical delivery across these systems, including onboarding, permissions, payment integrations, and partner APIs.

1. 1.
   Make Payment Records Useful: Match incoming payments to families using references, names, amounts, remembered payers, and payment claims. Give staff the evidence and a review queue when a match is uncertain.
2. 2.
   Fit Existing Habits: Let organisations keep their bank accounts and import existing records. Give households and members balances, payment plans, reminders, and support through WhatsApp.
3. 3.
   AI With Clear Boundaries: Use AI to understand messages, read fee lists and receipts, map import columns, and prepare actions. Staff confirm proposed changes, and the engine validates financial state transitions.
4. 4.
   Build a Financial History: Connect payment behaviour, savings contributions, and community signals to an explainable Kova Score. Use that history to inform affordability checks, repayment limits, and financing decisions.

• ◆
  One Engine, Multiple Workflows: Model collections, households, plans, and permissions in a shared TypeScript engine. Network-specific rules support schools, savings groups, landlords, clinics, and employers.
• ◆
  Evidence Before Credit: A payment screenshot opens a claim. Verified provider events or staff-reviewed bank records establish the payment. Duplicate events cannot credit the same transaction twice.
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  Review Before Action: Assistant actions and partner imports are prepared for review, then pass through the same authorisation and validation as changes made in the dashboard.
• ◆
  Replayable Financial State: Save accepted commands in server order and rebuild workspaces from that history. Separate generated demo data from real organisation workspaces.

The practical starting point is a school trying to work out who has paid. A transfer may use a parent’s name, cover two children, or arrive with an incomplete reference. Kova combines those signals, remembers confirmed payers, and gives staff a clear way to resolve uncertainty. Payment plans and reminders then use the same records.

Kova Assistant can answer questions using permitted records and prepare supported changes. It can suggest matching a payment or drafting reminders, but a person confirms the action and code checks it. Receipt reading and language understanding help people use the workflow without giving the model authority to invent a payment.

The same payment history supports more than collections. Kova connects household accounts, savings contributions, community trust, and financing rules in one system. Schools, savings networks, landlords, clinics, and employers share a common engine with the controls and language each workflow needs.