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Offline-first contactless payments for Ethiopia.

Pay at the counter with just your fingerprint. No phone, no card, no app. It works today in our prototype. Next come a mobile wallet, contactless cards, and our own merchant readers, designed for patchy networks from day one.

An Ethiopian fintech startup · 320+ people on the waitlist

See fingerprint paymentsAll products

Illustration of our fingerprint payment prototype. Atronsa is in active development and not yet publicly available.

Pay with your finger.
No phone. No card.

Our first working payment method. A customer touches a small dongle on the merchant's phone, and the money moves from their wallet to the merchant's. It works today in our prototype.

Working prototype

Fingerprint payment dongle

Plugs into a merchant's Android phone over USB. The customer touches it to pay, and the dongle signs every match with its own key, so a match can't be faked.

Working prototype

Fingerprint enrollment station

Registers a customer's fingerprint once, with three presses. The template goes to our backend; the device keeps nothing.

How a fingerprint payment works

  1. 01

    Enroll once

    Our team registers the customer's fingerprint on the enrollment station with three presses.

  2. 02

    Merchant enters the amount

    The merchant types the amount on their Android phone, with our dongle plugged in.

  3. 03

    Touch to pay

    The customer touches the dongle. No phone, no card, no app on their side.

  4. 04

    Signed and settled

    The dongle signs the match with its own key, our backend checks it, and the money moves wallet to wallet through our double-entry ledger.

More on fingerprint payments

More ways to pay.
In development.

Fingerprint is where we started. Next: a wallet in your pocket, a card in your hand, and a reader on the counter, designed together so paying feels the same wherever you are.

Mobile walletIn development

Atronsa Pay

The app that connects you to your Atronsa wallet — to send, request, and pay, and to keep track of where your money goes.

  • Wallet balance and management
  • Send and request money
  • QR payments
  • Transaction history
  • Manage your Atronsa card
  • NFC payments — in development
Contactless cardPrototyping

Atronsa Card

A minimal contactless card linked to your wallet. Tap it on an Atronsa reader to pay — no phone required.

  • Linked to your Atronsa wallet
  • Tap to pay on Atronsa readers
  • Prototyped on NXP MIFARE DESFire EV3
  • Managed from Atronsa Pay
Merchant terminalPrototyping

Atronsa Reader

Our own countertop payment terminal. The merchant sets the amount, the customer taps, and the screen confirms the result.

  • 3.5″ touchscreen
  • Accepts Atronsa cards and NFC phones
  • Clear success, failure, and pending states
  • Light and sound feedback

How they work together

Every tap lands in the same ledger.

The app, the card, and the reader all speak to one Atronsa backend. Whichever way a customer pays, the payment is checked and recorded in one place — and both wallets reflect it.

  1. Atronsa Pay

    Your wallet, on your phone

  2. Atronsa Card

    Tap to pay, no phone needed

  3. Atronsa Reader

    Where the merchant gets paid

Atronsa backend

Wallets, transactions, and a double-entry ledger

Atronsa Reader

Built for the counter. Designed in-house.

Our own countertop payment terminal. A merchant sets the amount, the customer taps a card or phone, and the reader shows a result that has actually been confirmed.

Illustration of our prototype design. Not yet certified or commercially available.

01

A dedicated place to tap

A marked NFC surface tells customers exactly where to tap — card or phone.

02

Amounts you can read

A landscape touchscreen shows the amount in ETB and walks both sides through the payment.

03

Honest confirmation

Success is only shown once the payment logic confirms it. Detecting a card is not enough.

04

Feedback without looking

A blue status LED and a buzzer signal each state, so a busy counter never has to guess.

Try the payment flow

Card or phone. Same simple tap.

The merchant confirms ETB 250.00 on the touchscreen.

Pay with
Result

Inside the prototype

Hardware we chose and can stand behind.

The current prototype pairs a proven microcontroller with a dedicated NFC controller, inside an enclosure we designed ourselves. Components may change as we move toward production.

Controller
ESP32
Evaluating ESP32-S3 for the display model
NFC
NXP PN7160
Display
10.1 inch touchscreen
Landscape
Connectivity
Wi-Fi
To the Atronsa backend
Feedback
Buzzer + blue status LED
Enclosure
Custom-designed
Matte black, angled stand

Four steps.
No guesswork.

The same flow whether you use your finger, a card, or a phone. And a payment only counts once it has been confirmed.

  1. 01

    Enter amount

    The merchant enters or confirms the amount. The reader shows it in ETB so both sides see the same number.

  2. 02

    Finger, card or phone

    The customer touches the fingerprint reader, or taps an Atronsa card or a supported NFC phone on the reader's tap area.

  3. 03

    Process payment

    The payment is checked against the customer's wallet and recorded in our ledger — detecting a card is not the same as approving a payment.

  4. 04

    Confirm transaction

    The reader shows a confirmed success, failure, or pending state, with matching light and sound. Both wallets update.

Designed around
how Ethiopia pays.

Atronsa is built for people and businesses across the country — in every city and region, with every kind of connection.

Connectivity varies

Signal is strong in some places and patchy in others. A payment system for the whole country has to plan for both — not assume a perfect connection.

Paying should be simple

A tap is faster than counting change or typing an account number. We want everyday payments to feel that easy for everyone.

Every merchant counts

From a small shop to a large business, accepting payments shouldn't require expensive equipment or complicated setup.

Our direction · Offline-first

Payments shouldn't stop when the signal does.

Offline-first means we design every part of Atronsa — the app, the card, the reader, and the backend — with weak or missing connectivity in mind from day one, rather than treating it as an afterthought.

It's also hard. Paying safely without a live connection raises real questions about syncing, double-spending, and security. We're working through them carefully, and we'll be clear about what works offline as each piece is ready.

Today, payments in our prototype are confirmed online by our backend.

We build
every layer.

Instead of stitching together other companies' parts, we design the app, the card, the reader, and the backend ourselves. Owning the whole stack lets us shape the experience end to end — and design for offline conditions at every level, not just one.

01

Experience

Atronsa Pay and the reader's screen are designed together, so the words, amounts, and confirmations match on both sides of the counter.

  • Mobile app
  • Reader UI
02

Hardware

We design our own reader — electronics, firmware, and enclosure — and prototype our cards on secure NFC chips.

  • ESP32
  • NXP PN7160
  • DESFire EV3
03

Backend

A payment backend written in Rust, chosen for speed and for catching whole classes of bugs before the code ever runs.

  • Rust
  • Axum
  • PostgreSQL
  • SQLx
04

Ledger

Every transfer is recorded twice — once leaving one wallet, once arriving in another — so the books always balance and every birr can be traced.

  • Double-entry
  • Wallets
  • Transactions

Everyday payments,
for every Ethiopian.

Atronsa is an Ethiopian fintech startup. We're building an offline-first contactless payment ecosystem — our own wallet, cards, merchant readers, and backend — with the goal of making everyday payments simpler and more accessible across Ethiopia.

We're early, and we say so. Fingerprint payments already work end to end in our prototype, and 320+ ASTU students have joined our waitlist. Next is a pilot with campus cafes, then NFC cards, phone tap and offline payments.

Our story, progress and roadmap

Campus first, then the country

We start with students and cafes at ASTU in Adama, then grow campus by campus and city by city, until anyone in Ethiopia can pay or get paid with a touch.

Honest by design

A payment is successful when it's confirmed — never just because a card was tapped. The same goes for how we talk about our progress.

Built end to end

We own the app, the card, the reader, and the backend, so we can make them work as one.

Where we are

  1. Working

    • Fingerprint payment dongle
    • Fingerprint enrollment station

  2. Building

    • Payment backend and double-entry ledger
    • Atronsa Pay mobile app

  3. Prototyping

    • Atronsa Reader hardware and enclosure
    • Atronsa Card on DESFire EV3

  4. Next

    • Pilot with ASTU campus cafes
    • Phone tap and offline payments

320+ people are already waiting.

Join the waitlist and we'll email you when Atronsa opens, starting with ASTU students and campus cafes.

Let's talk
payments.

Whether you run a business, want to partner with us, or are interested in investing in Atronsa — tell us a little about yourself and we'll get back to you.

Reach us directly

Prefer email, a call, or Telegram? Our team is in Ethiopia and happy to talk.

Email

hello@atronsa.com

Phone

+251 905 429 602

Phone 2

+251 953 709 094

Telegram

@atronsasupport

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