Vic Sandy

Day 59 of contributing to @primus_labs PROVING YOUR INCOME SHOULDN'T REQUIRE REVEALING YOUR ENTIRE BANK HISTORY. Imagine applying for a loan, renting an apartment, or seeking business funding, only to be asked for six months of bank statements. For millions of Africans, this is a familiar experience. Financial institutions need evidence that applicants can meet their obligations. But traditional verification often demands more information than necessary. A bank statement reveals more than income. It exposes personal purchases, private transfers, family responsibilities, and other financial activities. So why should proving your financial capacity mean sacrificing your financial privacy? 1/ THE LIMITATIONS OF TRADITIONAL VERIFICATION Credit histories help lenders understand previous repayment behaviour, but they don't always reflect someone's current financial position. Freelancers, traders, gig workers, and small business owners may have consistent income without an extensive credit history. Their bank statements become important evidence of financial stability. However, sharing these records also means exposing transactions that have nothing to do with the loan application. 2/ THE REAL PRIVACY PROBLEM A lender might only need to establish a few things: - Average monthly income over six months. - Consistency of incoming payments. - Existing loan obligations. - Whether the applicant meets a specific affordability threshold. Yet applicants are often required to reveal hundreds of individual transactions to prove these facts. Collecting more information doesn't automatically mean achieving better verification. It can also create additional data protection responsibilities for the institutions receiving it. Nigeria's Data Protection Act 2023 reinforces the importance of handling personal information lawfully and responsibly. 3/ WHAT IF YOU COULD PROVE THE RESULT WITHOUT SHARING THE RECORD? Imagine a lender requires evidence that your average monthly income exceeds ₦500,000. Instead of submitting six months of bank statements, you generate a cryptographic proof demonstrating that your financial records satisfy that requirement. The lender can verify the relevant claim without automatically accessing your entire transaction history. This is the idea behind privacy-preserving financial verification. 4/ WHERE @primus_labs AND zkTLS COME IN zkTLS creates opportunities to generate cryptographic proofs from information obtained through authenticated web sessions. Rather than simply handing over raw financial records, users can establish claims about information retrieved from legitimate online sources. For financial applications, this could make it possible to verify income, account activity, or other relevant financial indicators without unnecessarily exposing unrelated personal information. It also provides a stronger foundation for verification than relying exclusively on uploaded documents. 5/ HOW IT COULD WORK Consider a Nigerian entrepreneur applying for a business loan. The lender requires an average monthly inflow of at least ₦500,000 over six months. A potential privacy-preserving process could involve: 1. Accessing authenticated banking information. 2. Calculating the relevant income indicators. 3. Generating a cryptographic proof of the required claim. 4. Allowing the lender to verify whether the requirement is satisfied. 5. Keeping unrelated financial transactions private. This is a potential application, not a claim that every bank currently supports this process. 6/ WHY THIS MATTERS Better financial verification could create opportunities for people who are often overlooked by traditional credit systems. Freelancers, independent workers, traders, and small business owners could demonstrate their financial capacity through relevant, verifiable information.