# Cr3dentials lands three angel checks as it builds credit for gig workers Stabledash Live, a Stabledash show. Sep 16, 2026. Elo Mukoro. https://live.stabledash.com/shows/the-live-show/episodes/building-credit-systems-for-the-gig-economy-toBgo7aEB_s The startup verifies platform earnings with zero-knowledge proofs and wants to show that people without a W-2 can borrow and repay. Cr3dentials, which verifies what gig workers and creators earn so they can access credit, got three angel checks last week, according to co-founder Elo Mukoro. Mukoro says the company is fundraising now and will push harder in the fall when people return to work. ## Proving earnings privately Elo Mukoro was lead developer relations at the Ethereum Foundation's privacy and scaling explorations team, working on zero-knowledge proofs, MPC and FHE. Cr3dentials uses ZK-TLS verification to pull earning data from any HTTPS platform without the company ever seeing it, covering platforms such as Uber, Bolt, TikTok, OnlyFans and X. Mukoro says Cr3dentials only sees a few selected values during underwriting, while neobank partners handle KYC on their users. ## First live customer Kasi Money uses Cr3dentials for Uber and Bolt verifications at 1,500 new users a week. Mukoro says Kasi would rather pay for this data than rely on its direct partnership with Bolt, because it is more real time and gives richer data on drivers. ## What neobanks are missing According to Elo Mukoro, crypto neobanks that want to add credit usually lack four things: a capital partner, licenses to lend in a compliant way, an understanding of where users earn, and a way to get money back. Cr3dentials says it will soon announce a credit facility that will extend capital to neobanks, and that facility currently works in the US and Africa. For collections, borrowers switch their payout account to the neobank, so repayment comes straight from the platform rather than through a direct debit. ## Competition and focus Elo Mukoro names Argyle, Plaid and Reclaim as competitors that each cover parts of the stack, but says he has not seen anyone combine ZK-TLS verification, embedded financing and a focus on gig workers. The target is creatives, gig workers and freelancers whose work has no W-2, a group he calls underserved. Cr3dentials has a live customer and fresh angel money. What it still has to show is a loan tape. Mukoro's plan for the next six to twelve months is to use crypto neobank pilots to show that lending to nontraditional earners keeps delinquency rates low. ## Key takeaways 1. Cr3dentials received three angel checks last week and plans to push its fundraise harder in the fall. 2. Kasi Money in South Africa runs 1,500 new verifications a week through Cr3dentials and plans to reverify its 150,000 existing users. 3. Over the next six to twelve months, Cr3dentials wants to run pilots with crypto neobanks to show that delinquency rates are low. ## Chapters - 0:00 Ethereum Foundation privacy work led to Cr3dentials' credit idea - 4:07 Childhood cofounders built this from their own gig work - 5:19 Neobanks and platforms can lend on verified platform earnings - 8:14 Loan formats vary by region and aim to avoid predatory terms - 12:09 Kasi Money in South Africa is the first live customer - 16:41 Crypto neobanks need capital, licenses, underwriting and collections - 19:51 Licensed facilities, ZK-TLS privacy and KYC support compliance - 22:17 Next year's goal is neobank pilots with low default rates - 24:15 Competitors each cover only part of the stack - 25:43 Fundraising underway with angel checks and a fall push ## Transcript **Elo Mukoro** (0:00) The new core for the next era of finance. **Host** (0:09) Halo. **Elo Mukoro** (0:10) Thanks for joining and being patient with us. Good to see you. Hey. Nice to meet you both, and super excited to be on the show. By the way, the production is insane. I'm **Zach Fowler** (0:20) a big fan. Well, we we appreciate it. Are we getting... Did did... Okay. That's Drew, by the way. I'm Zach. Zach F. You met Zach Hughes already. Did we say your name right? Is it Ilo? Ilo. Ilo. Got it. Cool. Well, I I was... I will say I was excited to to see you reach out because credit lending has been a big topic of conversation, and especially your positioning with credit for for gig workers, for Uber, for Bolt drivers. You're working at the Ethereum Foundation previously. So maybe give us a quick introduction. What were you doing at the Ethereum Foundation, and then what has led you into this? I'll say it's a little bit of a of a niche, a niche within niches, I would say, but we... I I like niching down, so I don't... That's actually a positive for me, not a bad thing. So, yeah, tell us about a little bit about your journey and what's led you to Credentials. **Elo Mukoro** (1:10) For sure. So, like, before I get into the Ethereum Foundation, I wanna talk a little bit about how I got there. I'd say one is when I was in college... Actually, really, was a chemical engineering major before I got into tech and everything like that. But I I worked at Dow Chemical and everything, and I I didn't too much like it. I wanted to create. I wanted to bring things out in the world, and that is when I actually started to get into tech. I taught myself how to code. I taught myself about Web three. This is about in 2021. Smart contracts, etcetera. And we ended up winning one of our first hackathons that we went to, me and my cofounder, who I've known for fifteen years at Kofi. We ended up winning our first hackathon in Denver, and we were building a similar version to what Credentials is today. And at that time, we were building on chain credit reputation using off chain transactions. But we ran into problems at the API layer because a lot of the APIs that we were trying to plug into either did not work, know, they did not exist, and that kind of like... That that put an end to that idea for that time being. So in this time where we were trying to figure out, okay, like, how do we bridge that gap? That's when I started to work for the Ethereum Foundation in specific privacy and scaling explorations. Well, the name is different now, but PSC. And I was a lead dev rel focused on cryptography, zero knowledge proofs, MPC, FHE, and basically what we were doing and what I was focused on was just onboarding people to the digital tools that we offered at PSC, which were really cool, and they're mainly about proving your digital footprint online in a privacy preserving manner. And, that is what really got, got me to like... Be like, you know, there's actually something here. There's a bunch of people that are earning from these platforms online because the data is very much siloed, yet they can't use this to access credit. They can't use this to, you know, get a get a get a car, get a mortgage, etcetera. So for us, what what clicked is that, oh, with, with zero knowledge proof, in a particular ZK TLS, we can actually verify their digital footprint, their earnings online from these platforms where they earn and help them get access to credit. And that is how we started, and where we are now with that is we've transformed that to be more embedded finance focused to where not only do we do the verification from these online platforms where it's not just Uber and Bolt, but we're talking about, like, TikTok, OnlyFans, x, etcetera. We do these verifications, but we also connect to credit facility... Or we connect to neobanks to credit facilities. We do the verification and help with the underwriting, and then we also help on the collection fees to facilitate the loan and make sure that everything works well. So, yeah, that's a long winded **Zach Fowler** (4:07) intro on credentials and where we are today, but, yeah, happy to take more questions. Co founder, fifth... Fifteen years. Is that going back to college? Is this like a childhood friend? I mean, that that feels like an eon in this space. And honestly, respectfully, you've been working with somebody that long. Tell us more about that backstory. **Elo Mukoro** (4:24) Yeah. Definitely childhood friend. We met in middle school, and we were actually both playing the French horn, and we were in the same section. And since then, like, we, you know, we went to middle school together, we went to high school together, we didn't go to the same colleges, but we remained really good friends, and, you know, and, yeah, we just, you know, it was in college where we were both also... We started, like, other businesses together, like website businesses. We were also gig gig workers at the time working on Upwork, trying to access credit was quite difficult. So we didn't... We just didn't have the answer for it, but we were like, okay, this is a problem, and we know for other Gen Zs that are doing these creative fields, it's also a problem for them. So that's that's how I really started going in on this space super hard with my co founder, who I've known for fifteen years. So so we're understanding this a little bit. So **Host** (5:19) simple simply said, if I'm a business, and I'm using a platform, we we use... We've been using this example in recent weeks as we've explored credit. We use Stripe for our business to take payments. Stripe understands our business. They can populate lending opportunities to us because of that. Is it a similar type of in... Like, experience, but more retail distributed across some of these use cases you've mentioned where I'm personally using this app or or whatever it might be, and I'm financially getting paid out through this system. Because of that, you have visibility over what's typical, what's normal, what's usual in that financial relationship. And then you can go and because of that, be in a position to as reliably and responsibly as possible issue credit to that person. How... Is that... One, is that understanding generally right? And then would love to break down some of these, like, use cases that you're seeing that has a good product market fit for this. Yeah. So **Elo Mukoro** (6:21) I think generally you're on the right track. But instead of Stripe giving you the loans, we're now saying that, you know, neobanks... We looked at the crypto neobanks and neobanks in the space today. They're onboarding a lot of, you know, new gen earners, people that are gen z, people that are earning in nontraditional ways. And what we're saying to them is like, hey. Like, you know, you have all these users that are earning from all places on the Internet. Let's... Let us help you understand their earning patterns with our Zika TLS verification. And then on top of that, once we've understood that we can stack capital on top of that and allow these users to be able to basically go out and pull all the places that they earn from online and use that to get some sort of credit line from this neobank through our partner facilities, or if they want to extend it on their own balance sheet, that's fine too. So, yeah, we're just... That... We're we're mainly attacking the neobank segment right now, but there is also that case where, you the platform itself, like Stripe, does want to extend credit. And we've actually had conversations with a couple of platforms. The general point that we're understanding here is that they may have a presence in The United States, and they may have a presence in Europe, but when you look outside of that, let's say Africa, when you look at Asia... Southeast Asia, LatAm in some cases as well, they do not really have that infrastructure set up to actually lend in a compliant way for that region. So we're also telling the platforms is like, hey. We we have lenders that can lend to these people that are earning from these regions. Let's connect them, and let's... We already have the verification system built in for these people that are earning outside of the West, and can... We can do embedded financing directly on your platform. And we're having those conversations now, but it's like a twofold solution here. **Zach Fowler** (8:14) What what is the... What would you say, like... And maybe if this isn't here today, maybe we can talk hypotheticals. But, like, what would the average loan size be? Like, is this... And I I think where I I am a little hesitant with this particular segment of of, you know, call it, neofinance, is payday loans have historically been very predatory. Interest rates are through the loop. It gets it gets people into cycles that they can't they can't break. And on the other hand, credit can be an extremely powerful tool, or who knows? I don't know. Maybe sometimes you wanna get your kid a birthday present, something's happening. Like I said, the... You never know what a situation somebody is in. So help me understand the form factor for these loans. Is this is this more akin to, like, a payday loan with lower interest? Is this speaking to somebody who just needs to take out a $5,000 loan because I need to get a new car? Is it both? And also, how do you prevent this from becoming, again, a predatory practice? **Elo Mukoro** (9:14) A predatory practice. Yeah. So I'd say it's both in a sense. Like, we can do payday loans, or we could do, like, installment non revolving loans to where they take out a certain amount based off the income from these platforms, and then pay back in installments. So it's it's both of these, I would say, and the use cases vary based on the region as well. Like, let's say we're in Nigeria and we're talking to an Uber driver, they may may just need, like, you know, a few $100 or maybe, like, $50 or something like that to be able to buy gas so that they can continue driving on Uber, right, in compare... In comparison to, you know, The US where an Uber driver might need it to actually just, like, operate on a day to day. So the use cases vary based on the region, but I'd say in terms of how we actually present... Prevent this from being like a predatory loan, one is these types of earners already struggle to access credit in general just because they earn from places people do not understand. So we're already, like, saying, like, hey. Okay. You earn on, I don't know, Gumroad, or you earn on, like, OnlyFans. Like, use this income to get access to their credit loans. Right? This is not something that currently exists today for these types of people. And, yeah, that's that's how we're basically going about it. In terms of, like, the actual... Like, how we actually prevent this from being predatory, this is something that's more... This is why this space exists. This is why stablecoins exist. I believe the capital formation piece is how we can actually drive down prices of these loans, you know, by cutting out a bunch of the middlemen and institutions. We already do the verifications ourselves and the under... Help with the underwriting, so we're saving costs on that front. And on top of that, you know, where we can build out these vaults where essentially people can invest in these vaults, and we we can offer these loans at a lower interest rate. But it first starts with us proving out the loan tape right now, proving out that this system works with these types of earners before we can actually, like, move it up to that scale. **Zach Fowler** (11:29) Yeah. And please, that that comment, predatory lending, that is no insinuation of anything that you're doing. That is simply observation from payday loans and and the practice that those have been... Because I do agree. Democratizing access to these financial primitives is is really one of the cornerstones of of blockchain technology. And generally, I think in all of these experience, credit is the missing piece, and it is something that people want access to. I think it's always just... It's it's always about finding a balance. It's a balance of, you know, the financial... Ultimate financial well-being of the consumer coming first before just adding another revenue line that, you know, people may need to take advantage of because of their situation. Exactly. Is this is this is this live today in any neobanks? Are there any use... Any any case studies that you would like to reference or or call out? Or bring us into, like, where where Credentials is at maybe in in bringing this vision to life. Oh, we are live, and I'm happy to, talk about this because we just did a customer success meeting with, our partner, **Elo Mukoro** (12:33) Cassie Money, based in South Africa. They actually a neobank in South Africa, they give cash advances to Uber and Bolt drivers and really just like freelancers and nontraditional earners in general. And basically, what we're helping them with right now is just the verification piece. We're not actually doing the financing piece because they already have they already have all that taken care of and recourse, which is great. Right? So we're just doing... Supplying them with the Uber and Bolt verifications. And from our customer success call, like, you know, there's a couple of things that we've heard. One, we've just heard, like, they're trying to increase their volumes of verifications now to, you know, about 1,500 a week. That's how much we're doing with them right now. And they're... These are all new users that they've just been getting from using our verifications. And now they're actually trying to reverify their existing 150,000 user base and also, like, re update the data that they currently have on them. And we're also learning that Cassie Money is, you know, just super happy with, you know, what... What's going on with credentials and how we can potentially add new platforms so that they can lend to more people. So, yeah, that's that's what we're doing with Cassie right now. I would say they are kind of like our... What's the word? They're like our... They're our first customer, and **Zach Fowler** (14:02) that... It's it's been great. And it's been a good learning lesson as we Congrats. Move on to pioneer embedded credit. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. This this is a hard product to get live. Like, this isn't like a super like, hey, you've already used something like this. Like, this is very much like on... This is the frontier. Like, this is the frontier of finance. Oh, **Elo Mukoro** (14:20) it is hard. Actually, The best best thing that they said to us... Right now, they do actually have a partnership with Bolt, but they said that they actually rather pay for our data because it is more real time. It gets them a lot better, richer data on these, you know, Bolt drivers, so they actually rather use our verifications, which I was surprised by. But, yeah, that that that was said as well. **Host** (14:50) Can you speak... We we were actually talking with Artisan Cash Duran from from that business, top of the show. He was talking about Mastercard and the specific role that they play here. I was I was... I don't know where exactly I saw this on the website on on Kasi. Is there any any thoughts on the role that Mastercard is playing to unlock whatever this use case is? Like, whatever's driving this growth right now, I'd imagine there's like tools or capabilities here that Zach, do you remember what it was called? It was it was **Zach Fowler** (15:25) R What is Mastercard? R... Yeah. Three letter acronym. I'm scrolling our chat really quick. I think you had a picture of RPPS. **Host** (15:33) Mastercard RPPS. I don't know if this is familiar to you, Halo, but **Elo Mukoro** (15:40) maybe more probably, what... What's driving some of the CASI growth? Yeah. I'd say what's driving... Oh, I I am not familiar with Mastercard Mastercard bill pay. I have actually talked to the art of the team. They're very cool, and I do like what they're doing. But I'd say what's driving a lot of Cassie Money's growth is there's currently no solutions for, like, peep... Well, one is just like neobanks in general for these freelancers and these gig workers is kind of like a newer concept, especially when you're looking in African regions. Right? So this is a neobank that is banking these Uber drivers, gig workers, freelancers, etcetera. And then they're also providing them with resources like the ability to save, you know, the ability to get yield and all these various things. And now we're adding... They're adding credit on top of the cash advances. Right? So it's just a sticky product within the ecosystem, and we're seeing like a lot of uptick in their growth as a company. **Zach Fowler** (16:41) Can you break down... And this is something that I'm... Maybe I I would like to better understand. You said they're using verification, but they're not... But then they're not using you for the actual credit part. So how do... What are these two parts of the stack? And it feels like you can you can serve both. Right now, you may not be for this this example. Explain that a little bit more for us. **Elo Mukoro** (17:03) Yeah. So we approached... We originally were a verific... Like verification infrastructure. So that's what we were looking to sell to customers, and that is what we told them that we do, and that is what we did. But when we were selling to them, they already had the capital part. They have a banking partner, and they already have the recourse solution and the way to get the money back. So that is like an optimal, like, phrase be, solution. Now when we're when we're looking at, like, neobanks, especially in the crypto space, yeah, they usually do not have any idea. Or they... One, they do not have the, you know, capital partner. They do not have the licenses to actually land in a compliant way in these regions. Three, they do not really understand, you know, their users and where they're earning from or their income sources. And four, they don't really have a way to actually get the money back. Right? So it's like, woah, like, we actually need to come with a lot more if we wanna actually add credit to the crypto sis... The ecosystem. So that's when we decided to... Okay. Let's... Let us go and get those capital partner... Or, like, credit facilities to partner with, which we we have done that now, and we will be announcing soon. But, yeah, we do have a credit facility that's looking to, you know, extend capital to Neomang so they can lend to the... This segment of the economy. So we do that. We we partner with them. We supply our verifications, you know, and help with the underwriting, and then we also help get the money back. Now we do this in a very unique way where it's it's based on the regions as well, but how we do it is we tell or we instruct the gig worker or, you know, the the borrower to essentially change their payout account information to, like, the neobanks. Right? So that whenever whenever they get paid off from the platform, it's actually gonna go straight to the neobank. And in the case that they switch those accounts to... Maybe, you know, they want to switch back to their own account, we have solutions, localized solutions, to combat that action. So for instance, in Nigeria, they're doing a very unique thing to where if you have their Social Security number equivalent, you actually can, you know, sweep outstanding debt. And in The US, you have, like, credit scores, you have collections, you have all these types of things. So it's based on the region, and we're actually working on, like, you know, exploring what types of recourse or legal solutions actually exist within the regions that we want to work with. So that's how we've been going about it. **Host** (19:51) Yeah. Credential... Getting credentials and just understanding these users, where they are, what use cases... Like, how do you how do you think about the... Especially the gig workers and some of these, like, nontraditional use cases. Like, how are you approaching, you know, being lawful, staying compliant, building this so that, like, you aren't unintentionally harboring or laundering a ton of money in the wrong ways? Like, how are you thinking about that? Because a lot of these, you know, companies who end up doing that intentionally or unintentionally, especially in recent years, have kind of found themselves somewhere in this conversation. So how how do you... What are you doing to prevent that that reality? **Elo Mukoro** (20:38) Yeah. So one is just like the credit facility that we work with, We work at the regions that they're able to, lend in compliantly. Like, so one that they have licenses. So like in The US, our credit our credit facility works in The US and Africa right now, and we're looking for others across. So from a capital formation and extension of loans, we kind of have that part covered. And then now with the actual, like, verification, because you can run into, like, platform terms of service and everything, This is where the technology that we're using really comes in handy, ZKTLS. We're doing these verifications from these online platforms, but we actually do not see any of the data itself. Right? We do selectively reveal data to our partners, but we don't have access to that. And when we actually do the underwriting, there's only certain few values that we see and not the full the full piece to actually, like, extend the credit line. And then when it comes to, like, a money laundering standpoint, like, we also make sure that we work with the neobank to make sure that they have KYC, their actual users. Right? So we know who who it is that we're even working with or lending to in the first place. And then when it comes to actually, you know, getting that money back, we're getting it directly from the platforms itself. You know, the user doesn't have to, like... You know, we don't actually direct debit their card or, like, get the money from the user directly. So that's how we're going about, like, building this in a way that's compliant and one that works. **Host** (22:16) Awesome. Anything we've missed, Yillo, as you as you think about the **Zach Fowler** (22:20) Those are too much. Let's say, bring us into, yeah, the next few months. You know, you have... It's great to see case studies live. Neo bank sector is growing. You'll get the payment on, like, data on, like, payment scan. CoinDesk, you know, released an article recently. You're probably looking at it. You're like, great. We're the right place, right time. These companies are growing. They need to diversify revenue. How do you see Prudential's really serving this need? Like, what is the dream use case right now? And, like, it's easy to say, yeah, we wanna be in the biggest neobank, but I'm looking for a more granular answer of, like, this is actually the person that we wanna serve in this neobank, in this market right now. Like, where do you think you'll find your success in in the next six to twelve months? That's a amazing question. **Elo Mukoro** (23:07) Yeah. So in the next six to twelve months, I want to prove... I want us to prove that we can actually lend to nontraditional earners. These are creatives. These are gig workers. These are freelancers through these neobanks in a way that keeps the default rates low. Right? And also gives people more access, especially the new generation of earners. So we're not necessarily focused on nine nine to five. I think they're already served in many regions, but this creative landscape, you know, people doing work that doesn't exist in the traditional system, work that doesn't have a w two, is one that's underserved and one that we want to explore and really bring out, especially because we believe that these earners are very synonymous with, the crypto space as well. So the next six to twelve months, we wanna launch launch pilots with neobanks, crypto neobanks, and we want to prove out that loan tape and prove out that delinquency rates are low so that we can now expand and move on to the next thing and put... Build this in a more broader, grandiose scale. **Host** (24:15) How do you, Elo, think of the competitive landscape here? Like, do you feel like this is kind of a first mover moment for the brand, or are you finding like, yeah, there there is kind of an established category here, and there are some other, like, interesting approaches that you've seen out there. Yeah. No. So **Elo Mukoro** (24:34) the... That... It's actually a loaded question because we we don't... We haven't seen anyone that does our exact solution, like, completely with the ZKTLS, you know, the embedded financing and catering to gig workers, but we have seen competitors that maybe do sections of these things. So we've seen embedded finance. Everyone has seen that before. Right? We've seen verification providers like, you know, Argyle, Plaid in in the space too, like, more on the ZK side, Reclaim, etcetera. And, you know, we've also seen, you know, people that, do collections and these types of things and help on that side. So our competitors, I I guess I would... Well, I wouldn't say we're first movers because there are people that are trying to attempt to lend to these people, but they do not have that verification infrastructure built in house like we do that is powered by ZK TLS that allows us to reach anywhere online that starts with HTTPS and help this person access the credit line. There's so many nuances to it. Yeah, man. It's it's crazy. **Zach Fowler** (25:43) Yeah. I I didn't realize, you know, Credentials has been around for for years, give or take. It sounds like there's been a few different forms. But are are you guys fundraising right now? Are there any, like, professional asks that you're that you're looking for that are top of mind as you go into these next six to twelve months? **Elo Mukoro** (26:00) Yeah. Right now? Yeah. We are fundraising right now. Well, actually last week we just got three angel checks. So there's momentum there's momentum in this space, so that's great. But, yeah, we're fundraising right now. It's... But we're moving it a little later in the fall. Right now it's like European. I love the cash. I love the dollar bills. But, yeah, right now, it's like, I guess, European holiday hours. It's just summer in general, so people are kind of winding down off the vibes and the vacations and the peach bellinis. But But, yeah, now when people are returning back to work, we're really gonna kick kick kick off our fundraise a lot harder. So, that... That's that's where we're at in terms of the fundraise. Shout **Host** (26:49) out to Alex from Verida Ventures. We had him on recently, so he's very top of mind. He's been a great partner in the pre seed seed round stage for early founders. I don't know if you've heard of Verida before, but **Zach Fowler** (27:03) Alex is great. Yeah. I was saying, if you go up to their site, StableScape x y z credential... If you're not on there, go verify your company because you'll probably be one of the three credit credit companies out there. **Host** (27:17) Do. Well, it sounds like you have a busy q four coming up. Best of luck with just the the fundraise and and continuing to build. As you... We we... I don't know if you saw earlier in the show, but a part of the stream is focused on neobanks and covering them. So if you have other of these... More of these partners that you're that you're working with or any any neobanks specifically that you're in touch with, just open invite as well. Send them send them our way, especially ones that are taking a unique approach and, like, serving a specific market really well. That was something that was really interesting. Talked about with Ryan earlier in the show, Ryan Bozarth from Dakota. It's funny. All these threads kind of tying together. So anyway, it was great to have you on the show, and we'll have you back. Great to **Elo Mukoro** (28:07) was great to be here, and thank you guys for inviting me and allowing us to speak a little bit more about what we're doing. Yeah. Like, I love what you guys are doing and connecting the whole ecosystem in general. Like, I I watch the I watch the pod, and I see the guests on there, and, we are working with some of them. So really exciting stuff what's going on with Sable Dash. **Host** (28:27) Let's go. I'll hit you with a money cannon as we salute you away. **Elo Mukoro** (28:31) Great to meet you, man. Go on. Alright, man. Great to meet you both. Cheers. Cheers.