Locked-Down Founders Build AI App for 10,000 Users

Precious Arikeri noticed something strange during COVID lockdowns in 2020: stuck at home, she was somehow spending more money than when she commuted to work. Between online orders, data top-ups, and endless bank transfers, her money disappeared with no easy way to track it.

She teamed up with software engineer Wahab Balogun in June 2022 to build Trackfundx, an app that pulled transactions from multiple bank accounts into one dashboard. For Nigerians juggling money across several accounts, it seemed like the perfect solution.

But reading bank statements turned out to be harder than expected. A transaction log showed money leaving an account, but not what was actually purchased. When Arikeri transferred money to a friend, the app couldn't tell if she was splitting a dinner bill or paying rent.

Then the real problems hit. The app kept logging users out of their primary banking apps. API costs climbed to ₦200 per call, making every data fetch expensive. When Arikeri moved to the UK for graduate school in September 2022, her own app stopped working because it only connected to Nigerian banks.

Sitting in the UK, unable to use the very tool she created, Arikeri had a realization. She was seeing AI document-extraction tools in her insurance job that could read receipts directly. Why parse vague bank logs when AI could scan the actual receipt?

Balogun agreed, and they made a bold call: scrap the banking integrations entirely. In 2024, they launched Expense AI, a completely new product that reads receipts using artificial intelligence.

The shift solved everything at once. No more relying on unstable banking infrastructure or expensive API calls. More importantly, receipts work the same everywhere, whether you're in Lagos or London.

The Ripple Effect

What started as one woman's lockdown frustration became a global tool. Expense AI now serves 10,000 users across 100 countries, proving that sometimes the best solution means abandoning your original plan entirely.

The founders turned a costly dependence on banking APIs into independence through AI technology. Users can now track spending by simply photographing their receipts, no matter which country they're in or which bank they use.

Arikeri and Balogun's willingness to rebuild from scratch transformed a Nigeria-only banking app into a borderless financial tool that works anywhere receipts exist.