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Cooperatives

Every co-op on the platform. Onboarding is sales-led — you create each one by hand and set its rate at creation.

Zvimba status
3Active cooperatives
US$2,431Fees this month
US$1,912Awaiting settlement
CooperativeRegistrationDevelopmentsMembersCollected / moStatus
Budiriro Housing Cooperative CS/1184/2019 Budiriro Extension 214 US$31,840 Active
Chitungwiza Unity Cooperative CS/0942/2017 Manyame Park 340 US$47,600 Active
Ruwa Progressive Cooperative CS/2071/2022 Damofalls Phase 2 88 US$11,264 In arrears
J1 decision · sales-led only

There is no self-serve signup. A platform administrator creates every cooperative by hand, which suits high-touch onboarding and lets you set the negotiated per-member rate at the moment of creation.

Onboard a cooperative

Two things happen here: the tenant is created, and its commercial terms are set. Both are yours to decide, not theirs.

The cooperative

As registered under the Cooperative Societies Act.

Where net remittance lands. Because you collect and remit, they need a bank account rather than a payment gateway login.

Commercial terms

Netted at settlement — you never invoice this cooperative.

US¢
250 = US$2.50
US¢
Covers the permit phase
%
Capped at US$12 per transaction
Fees never touch a member's balance

A member who pays US$500 has their contract reduced by US$500. Your fee is the cooperative's expense, taken from the cooperative's settlement. This is an invariant with a test, not a convention.

First administrator

They receive the invite and set their own credentials.

E.164, the primary identifier

the cooperative created

The tenant exists and is sealed from every other cooperative. Now get its administrator in.

Invite the administrator

Delivered on the platform's WhatsApp Business account.

WhatsApp
Message preview

Makadii Tendai. You have been set up as administrator for the cooperative on Mabwe. Tap to set your password and get started: mabwe.co.zw/i/7QK4M2

J7 decision · the WhatsApp account is yours, for now

Onboarding takes minutes because you already hold a verified Meta business account. The cooperative can migrate to its own number later. You carry the cost and the policy risk in the meantime — one violation is an all-tenant event.

the cooperative

· onboarded by Twunhu Studios

Their setup checklist
Cooperative createdBy you, just nowDone
2Administrator invited · WaitingSent
3First development definedTheir seven-step wizardWaitingStarted
4Members invitedNothing bills until members are activeWaitingReady
What this cooperative is worth to you
Monthly at full sell-out
Their collections / mo
Per active member
US¢250
Monthly floor
US¢12000
Collection fee
0.75%
Settlement account

Projection assumes every stand in their development sells and collects on schedule. Real figures replace this once payments start.

Now switch surface

You are done. The cooperative takes over from here — open the administrator's dashboard and build their first development.

Open cooperative admin →

Settlement run

The single billing artefact. You never invoice a cooperative, so there is no dunning, no card on file, and no risk on your own revenue.

March 2027
Gross collected
Your fees
0Payments
Net to remit
the cooperative · statement
Netting is what makes this work

Because you hold the funds before the cooperative does, your subscription, pass-through costs and collection fee all come off before remittance. That single mechanism removed almost the whole SaaS-billing problem.

Two things this must never do

A member's balance is never reduced by a platform fee — that is the cooperative's expense. And member float never mixes with operating cash. Both are asserted in the engine and are almost certainly licensing conditions too.

Provider vetting

Verification is earned, never bought. A provider can be subscribed but unverified, or verified but lapsed — two independent flags, so the badge always means something.

37Registered
19Subscribed
12Verified
US$855Subscriptions / month
ProviderCategoriesSubscriptionVetting
your company ActiveNone VerifiedUnverified
Masimba Construction (Pvt) LtdRoads, earthworks, drainageActiveVerified
Tendai Civils (Pvt) LtdRoads, water reticulationActiveVerified
Highfield EarthworksEarthworksActiveUnverified
Chiedza ElectricalZESA reticulationLapsedVerified
The badge is a liability if it means "paid"

Vetting means checking company registration, references and past work — and the fee covers the cost of doing that, not the privilege of displaying it. If a cooperative is defrauded by a provider wearing this badge, this screen is what they will point at.

Plan & rates

the cooperative's commercial terms. Negotiated per client while the model is unproven.

What they pay

All of it netted at settlement — you never invoice them.

US¢
Counted per person, not per contract
US¢
Covers the permit phase
%
US¢
2% of a US$10,000 lump settlement gets renegotiated. Cap it.
Overage billed at cost through the settlement statement
At full sell-out
Their collections
Members at full sell-out
120
Why per-member and not percentage alone

Every cost you carry is per member — notifications, statements, storage, support. Per-member tracks your marginal cost; the small collection fee prices the settlement risk you took on by holding the money.

Why the floor exists

A cooperative spends six to twelve months on permits with twenty members signed. That is when your support load peaks and your per-member revenue is near zero.

Settlement history

Every run, every cooperative. Your revenue is the fees column, and none of it needs chasing.

US$89,344Gross collected, March
US$2,431Your fees, March
US$86,913Remitted
2.7%Effective take rate
PeriodCooperativeGrossFeesNet remittedStatus
Mar 2027 RemittedPending
Mar 2027Budiriro Housing CooperativeUS$31,840US$789US$31,051Remitted
Mar 2027Chitungwiza Unity CooperativeUS$47,600US$1,207US$46,393Remitted
Mar 2027Ruwa Progressive CooperativeUS$9,904US$435US$9,469Held — arrears
Feb 2027Budiriro Housing CooperativeUS$30,120US$776US$29,344Remitted
Two accounts, never mixed

Member float sits in a segregated account and your operating cash sits in another. That is good practice and almost certainly a licensing condition once you are authorised.

Holding a settlement is a serious act

Ruwa's run is held because they are behind on their own plan. Members there are still owed accurate records regardless — withholding their cooperative's money does not entitle you to withhold their statements.

Account status

What happens when a cooperative stops paying you — and what happens to their members, who are not the party in breach.

Suspended Active

Current policy

Chosen during the design interview.

Cooperative administrators locked outCannot create, edit, or record anything
Member transactions frozenNo payments can be taken
Nothing is deletedEvery record survives suspension intact
Members lose sight of their balancesThis is the part worth revisiting
The uncomfortable part

Freezing member visibility over the cooperative's unpaid invoice takes away the exact thing you sold members — sight of their own money. They did nothing wrong, and the record you are withholding is arguably theirs rather than the cooperative's.

The alternative you rejected

Members keep permanent read-only access to balances, statements and receipts; only administrative functions lock. Weaker commercial pressure on the cooperative, but it keeps you out of the position of holding people's records hostage over someone else's debt.

Worth revisiting before real cooperatives are live.

Platform event log

Append-only, across every tenant. Every state transition in the system writes one row with an actor and a timestamp.

The only surface that crosses tenants

Cooperative administrators see their own events only. This view sits above the tenancy boundary, which is exactly why access to it needs to be rare and logged in turn.

Substrate for agents, later

The same table gives a future agent perfect recall of what happened and when, which is why it exists from day one even though nothing reads it yet.