If you have followed this blog for a bit or read our post on Celo yield farming, you would see that we mentioned Valora. In this article, I will provide more insights on the app; this will be a complete guide to Valora from what it is to using it effectively.
What is Valora?
Valora is a payment system built on the Celo network. With Valora, you can accept payments and pay for goods and services. Also, you can send and receive Celo and cUSD to and from friends and anyone anywhere in the world.
What is it used for?
Valora is primarily used to receive and send Celo and Celo-related cryptocurrencies.
On Valora, you can send gift cards in Celo Dollars, earn Celo rewards, complete transactions on cashback apps like Bidali, and get a Celo address and wallet that you can send to anyone to send you Celo. You can also connect that wallet to yield farming apps like Ubeswap to farm yields.
How to Sign Up on Valora?
Anyone anywhere in the world can sign up on Valora, as long as they have a smartphone; it has apps for iOS and Android phones on Google Play and App Store. It doesn’t have a web app or desktop app. The first step to signing up is downloading and installing the app.
Valora accounts are tied to your account key. Your mobile number is also connected, but no one can access your funds using your phone number only. If you forget your mobile number in the future, do not forget your account key because that is the only way to access your account.
Your account key is the private key for your Celo wallet, and it’s crucial you store it somewhere private, safe, and offline, for example, a hardware wallet. We published an article regarding hardware wallets previously, which also explains what an account key is in more detail, so ensure you read that if you haven’t.
After signing up, confirm your phone number; this is done using three codes that are sent via text message. After that, you can send money to anyone using their phone number even if they are not registered on Valora; it also verifies the link between your account and phone number.
When you are done, you can choose to sync your contacts so that you can send money to anyone without having to type their phone number; you can select them from your contact list.
How to Add Money on Valora
To be able to do anything on Valora, you need money. To get money, you can request it from anyone on your contact list or using your QR code (more on this later). Also, you can add some Celo Dollars or Celo to your account. To add some money, click on the hamburger menu and select “Add and Withdraw”
Then click on “Add Funds” and select the currency you want. The options are cUSD and Celo. Then choose how you wish to pay on the app.
You can pay with a debit card or bank account using third-party services that include Ramp, Simplex, and Moonpay; you can also pay with a cryptocurrency exchange including Bittrex, CoinList Pro, and OKCoin. Alternatively, you can copy your wallet address (more on this in the last section) from Valora and send crypto to that address from any crypto exchange or wallet.
Another way to add Celo is by buying Celo from Valora using your cUSD balance. You can do that by clicking on “CELO” in the menu section.
How to Send Remittances to Friends Anywhere
As mentioned earlier, you can send money to anyone even if they don’t have a Valora account. All you need to do is click on the “Send” button on the home page.
That will bring up your contact list where you can select anyone to send money to. There’s also the option to choose the QR code icon, which can then scan someone’s code to send them money; this feature is significant for paying merchants or anyone else.
You can also type the wallet address you want to send money to (ensure you verify the wallet address first; else, that money will be lost.
After selecting who you want to send money to, type the amount, review it and send. The fees for doing this are pretty small (as low as $0.001 per transaction) as associated with the Celo Network to support the security and speed of the transaction.
Note that Valora has a daily transaction limit of $500. If you wish to transact above that limit, you can request that from support and will need to go through a KYC verification process.
How to Pay for Services/Products with Valora
Paying for services or products with Valora works like sending money to your friends (as explained in the previous section). Sending payments can be done by sending it to a public wallet key or physically (in-store) by scanning the QR code of the merchant.
To scan a QR code, the merchant must already have a Valora account to receive the funds.
How to Earn Rewards on Your Celo
Everyone likes to get free money. In our earn free cryptocurrency article, I showed you how to earn free crypto using different means. One way mentioned was earning rewards in crypto apps. Valora is one app that gets you sweet crypto rewards.
To get rewards, click on the hamburger icon (menu) and select “Earn Rewards” at the top. You will see a page that looks like this:
There are three levels of rewards and what you get depends on how much cUSD you have in your account. You keep getting rewards as long as you have enough cUSD left in your account every month.
Given that the rewards are in Celo, it’s worth it. As the value of the currency goes up, so does the value of your portfolio.
How to Cash out?
You are earning, paying in, and receiving money; it’s only fair that you can withdraw your money as well. Valora allows withdrawing through cryptocurrency exchanges, gift cards, and mobile top-up (minutes/airtime and data plan).
To withdraw, go to the menu and click on “Add and Withdraw”, then click on “Cash out”. You will be presented with this screen:
To withdraw, you need to have money in the currency that you select. That means you can’t choose cUSD when you don’t have cUSD. If you need to withdraw Celo but only have cUSD, you can buy some and pay with your cUSD.
As you can see from the above screenshot, an option is greyed out. The reason is, you can only send what you have, and some options are only available to one currency. For example, if I select CELO, gift cards and mobile top-up will be greyed out.
To withdraw, select the currency you want and how you wish to receive your funds. Using a cryptocurrency exchange and sending it to an address is pretty straightforward. The gift card and mobile top-up options are available based on country; some countries can only do mobile top-up but can’t do gift cards and vice versa. Bidali processes that area.
How to Valora with Different Top Crypto Apps
You can set up Valora as your CELO wallet by setting up your account number (public key) on any crypto apps to receive or send funds. Here are some of them:
- Coinbase
- Bitfy
- Simplex
- Moonpay
- BeamAndGo
- Binance
- And any legit crypto exchange or wallet
To find your account number, click on the menu icon, and you will see “Account no” at the bottom. Your public key would be below that.
Tap on it to copy the address to your clipboard.
What do you Think of Valora?
Valora makes crypto accessible at any time of the day for use in day-to-day activities like shopping and gifting a friend. Also, if you are new to crypto, it has an easy-to-use interface to help you get started with purchasing crypto.
It also helps that they have customer support that is accessible from the website through a live chat, email, and the app through their knowledge base and customer center (click on “Help” and select “Contact”).
What are your thoughts on Valora? Let me know in the comments. Also, don’t forget to click on the subscribe button below for email updates when we publish new posts.
