Ryan Solomon sat down with Chaima Torkhani, Project Manager at Enda Tech, and Jaafar Saied of The Hashgraph Association. They discussed an impact-based loyalty program that Enda Tamweel is developing on Hedera. Enda Tamweel is a Tunisian microfinance institution with more than 35 years of experience. It has served nearly one million clients since its inception and has around 550,000 active clients today. The program is currently in the PoC and testing phase, and the team is preparing to bring it into production.
🇹🇳 Enda Tamweel is developing an impact-based loyalty program on Hedera with The Hashgraph Association. The Tunisian microfinance institution has around 550,000 active clients and is integrating the program with its existing core banking system. The PoC is designed to reward clients for repayment history and completed loan cycles, as well as job creation, business formalization, renewable energy investment and digital adoption. The loyalty engine connects through APIs, with calculations handled in the background and key interactions recorded on Hedera. Full interview with Chaima Torkhani, Project Manager at Enda Tech, and Jaafar Saied of The Hashgraph Association:
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Why Traditional Loyalty Programs Fall Short
Torkhani opened by describing what she sees as the core flaw in traditional loyalty. In her view, these programs have become too transactional. A customer acts, earns points, and then waits for a reward. In practice, customers often struggle to track or understand those points.
Points may also expire, and the rules behind them can stay unclear. As a result, frustration builds and trust erodes. Customers feel they simply collect points inside a fixed set of rules. They do not feel the program recognizes the relationship they have with the brand.
Torkhani argued that the problem is not loyalty itself. Instead, the problem lies in how loyalty has traditionally been designed. She said loyalty should recognize the quality of the relationship between customer and institution. It should also reward positive behavior that supports a more inclusive and sustainable society. This approach matches the social and environmental mission of Enda Tamweel. Technology, she added, now gives the team a chance to rethink the model.
What Impact-Based Loyalty Rewards
The program rewards clients for more than repayment. Torkhani explained that the team first looks at the relationship with Enda Tamweel. That includes repayment history and completed loan cycles. A client with a long and positive record earns recognition for it.
The program then goes further and looks at the impact a client creates through their business. It rewards the creation of permanent jobs. It also rewards business formalization and work in sectors such as agriculture, production and handicrafts.
An environmental dimension sits alongside these measures. Clients who invest in renewable energy can earn rewards. Meanwhile, the program encourages digital adoption. Clients who use digital channels for repayment and disbursement can earn rewards as well. Torkhani said this makes financial services more convenient, easier to use, and more accessible for the customer.
Keeping the Technology Invisible to Clients
Many Enda Tamweel clients have limited digital experience. Solomon asked how the team designs the program so those clients still feel the benefit. Torkhani answered that clients should not worry about technology in any project. They should only think about the benefit, such as how points work and how they receive a reward.
Enda Tamweel relies on its proximity to clients to deliver that experience. Its wide branch network and field teams can support clients who need digital help. Torkhani summed up the approach in one line. The institution brings the technology to the client, not the other way around.
Saied backed this view from The Hashgraph Association side. He said the technology should work quietly in the background without customers knowing it exists. He compared it to everyday internet protocols that people use without understanding how they work. In his words, the goal is technology serving trust, not technology as the headline.
What Hedera Adds and How the Engine Connects
Solomon then asked what recording key loyalty interactions on Hedera provides that a closed database cannot. Torkhani pointed to transparency across the life cycle of loyalty points. Each interaction can be recorded in a trustable and verifiable way. This removes gray areas around calculation, allocation, usage and expiration.
She also noted that traditional loyalty programs sit inside isolated databases. Blockchain can break down those silos. In theory, loyalty value could then circulate between partners, industries and brands.
On the architecture side, Torkhani described a clear exchange point with the core banking system and other systems. The loyalty engine connects through APIs and batch flows. The core system exposes business events, and the loyalty system consumes them. In return, the loyalty system exposes its own APIs. Digital channels and other IT applications can then retrieve details such as a customer’s score, benefits and status.
Each system stays stable and independent while they communicate through standardized interfaces. Critical operations leave a trace for consistency and traceability across systems. Notably, the team performs calculations in the background and records only key information on Hedera. Torkhani said Hedera offers fast processing, low cost and strong scalability. Therefore, she expects the system to stay performant at larger scale without clients seeing technical issues.
What the Project Could Show Other Institutions
Saied described Enda Tamweel as a strong use case for The Hashgraph Association. Its mandate across Africa focuses on moving distributed ledger technology from pilots into institutions that serve people at real scale. Microfinance fits that goal because it already reaches millions of unbanked and low-banked people. In addition, Enda Tamweel runs a core banking system every day. As Saied put it, the team is not starting from scratch. It plugs new technology into something that already works at volume.
Saied also pointed to the lesson for other institutions. A loyalty program can connect to an existing banking system through APIs. Institutions do not need to rebuild everything from zero. Likewise, he said governments and development organizations do not have to discard what already works to adopt distributed ledger technology. It can sit alongside existing systems.
Torkhani closed with her own view of success. She said the project can show how technology creates tangible value for underserved populations who are excluded from traditional banking. It should strengthen trust and proximity with clients across the country. It should also support financial inclusion at scale, which she defined as positive impact and sustainable economic activity, not only repayment.
Torkhani acknowledged that the solution is technologically advanced and complex. However, she said it can still give value to clients and make services more accessible. She believes the project offers a path for other microfinance institutions to follow.
Saied added a broader outlook for the region. He said Africa does not just have room for distributed ledger technology, it needs it. He pointed to stablecoin adoption and the tokenization of real assets as areas that could open African markets to more people.
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