Long before there were banks in every neighbourhood, people saved together. A group of neighbours, colleagues or relatives would each put in a fixed amount every month, and each month one of them would take the whole pot. When everyone had taken a turn, the circle ended. The savings circle is centuries old. It works because the people in it already trust each other.
Sanad did not invent this, and does not intend to improve on it. What we saw was a narrower problem: the bookkeeping. Who has paid this cycle. Who is short. What is actually in the pot right now. Who took money out, and when. That is where informal arrangements go wrong — not because anyone is dishonest, but because a shared pot with no shared record is a memory test that somebody eventually fails.
So Sanad is a wallet you can send money from, and rooms — a shared pot a group pays into together. A room can be a pool (a shared balance with rules the organiser sets), a savings circle (the rotating pot described above), or a donation room (one-way giving, where only the organiser takes the money out). Our job is to make the record honest and the money traceable. Nothing more.
What we chose, and what it costs
These are decisions, not features. Each one has a downside, and we would rather name it than sell around it.
- No fees on money moving between people. Transfers, contributions, payouts and donations cost nothing. The one exception is cashing out: some withdrawal methods carry a fee — a percentage, a flat amount, or both — which is deducted from what you receive and is shown to you before you confirm. Each method can also set a minimum and a maximum amount you may move through it, and a withdrawal is refused outright if the fee would swallow the whole of it.
- Every currency is its own silo. Your dollars stay dollars. We never convert your money behind your back — which also means you cannot move money between your own balances. That is a real limitation. We prefer it to a hidden exchange rate.
- Rooms are private by default. Members do not see each other, and they do not see who put in or took out — unless the organiser switches either of those off, which they are allowed to do. The organiser always sees the roster: they approve who joins, so joining a room means showing that one person your name and phone number. An anonymous donation is the exception — it creates no membership at all, so the organiser never learns who gave. Our own staff still can. Anonymity hides you from the room, not from us.
- Donations carry proof. An organiser can post photos and documents showing what the money did. But we do not check them. A proof is a claim by the organiser, not a finding by us. And a donation is final: there is no refund on request, and leaving the room does not give it back. The one exception is cancellation — if the room is cancelled while the money is still sitting in the pot, each contributor is returned their net position (pro-rata, if the pot is short). Once the organiser has released the money to their own wallet — which they may do at any time, with no approval step — it is gone.
What we cannot promise
A savings circle is not guaranteed. If a member stops paying, we do not cover the gap, and we do not fine them — there is no penalty of any kind anywhere in Sanad. The cycle is simply marked as defaulted, and the organiser has two ways out: remove the members who did not pay — their contributions for that failed cycle are returned to them — and carry on with a smaller circle, or cancel the circle and settle everyone's net position. If the circle carries on smaller, the payouts still to come are smaller than the ones already made. We keep the record straight. We cannot make anyone pay.
A refund from a pot can come back short. When a room is cancelled, each person is returned their net position — everything they put in, less anything they took out. If the pot no longer holds enough for everyone, the refunds are pro-rata: you get a share of what is left, not the whole of what you are owed.
Room limits are the organiser's, not ours. A pool organiser can set a reserve the pot may not fall below, per-withdrawal minimums and maximums, and a rolling cap on how much each member may take in a period. We enforce those rules, but they are that organiser's rules — not a protection we extend to you. The organiser is exempt from them.
What our staff can do
We are not a neutral pipe, and saying otherwise would be a lie of the kind this page exists to avoid. Our staff can see the whole ledger, including the identity behind a donation that is anonymous to the room. They approve or reject every cash-in and cash-out. They can hide a room from discovery while a complaint is looked at. They can reverse a transaction, and they can force a room to close — which moves money, because closing it refunds what is in the pot. We use these powers to correct mistakes and to act on abuse, not on one member's request against another.
What Sanad is not
We are not a bank. Your balance is a credit we issue on our own books, not a deposit, and it is not insured. We are not a lender: there is no credit, no overdraft, no interest, and you can never spend money you do not have. We are not a charity regulator: anyone can open a room, we do not verify identities — there is no ID check anywhere in Sanad — and we do not vet the person you are handing money to.
We keep the ledger. The trust is still yours to place.