Comments on: Africa’s small merchants and payments

By: A Mobile Money Wish List for 2012 | Afrinnovator

A Mobile Money Wish List for 2012 | Afrinnovator — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:38:45 +0000

[…] Tighter integration of mobile money at the POS (or better stated, powering micro-payments via mobile money) – This is closely related to the first point but it seems that it should be noted […]

By: South Africa Business News

South Africa Business News — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 14:16:35 +0000

This is an interesting technology that could well be the payment gateway of choice in the future, my only concern is the security and the opportunity for fraud.

By: zack

zack — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 08:58:14 +0000

I just bought a waterpump Chinese model from the local Davis & shirtif at 182$ instead of the Japanese model at 526$ .it took a couple of weeks of asking different people to find out the only difference between the two models is that one can run for ten hours without overheating .
While I do appreciate the innovative work by African techpreneurs, as a consumer I feel left out.
As an African I am a walk-in customer. You wouldn’t catch me dead buying an item
online. So how do you get my money?
The challenge is not to create the best payment solution but how to link up to my needs.
Team up with irrigation equipment suppliers and consultants and have content I can acess from the local supplier they then can teach me how to use my phone to use acess content.
Trust is very important. I trust Davis & shartif, I trust M-pesa, I trust Nakumatt and citizen Radio & T.V .
payment solution providers should focus on the people we trust

By: Kimo Quaintance

Kimo Quaintance — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 19:05:00 +0000

Nice post – a welcome summary for those of us watching African developments in mobile payments from Europe. A question to be addressed I would have to add to yours is about fraud potential / prevention. How do you develop the system to prevent uncovered fraud losses like this: http://www.gmeltdown.com/2010/02/m-pesa-fraud-agents-beware.html

By: Toffene B. Kama

Toffene B. Kama — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:16:31 +0000

For sure.
After “ATM” like mobile money, real mobile commerce looks like a natural evolution.
Not sure there is need for physical device though (a la Square or iZettle), managing even simple physical airtime vouchers has proven to be challenging and many carriers have moved into virtual airtime distribution (the actual ancestor of mobile money).
Also, try to convince a local small micro-merchant to pay 2% of their revenues for accepting a new payment mechanism… while cash is “tangible, free and sadly tax free”.

There is need for adding a lot more value and getting hands dirty …beyond simple payments !
@tkanet

By: Veeh Cirra

Veeh Cirra — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 09:15:35 +0000

this is great food for thought, there is so much oppurtunity here especially considering the little market percentage that is actually captured by Mpesa,incorporating a simple safe payment system would be wonderful for businesses.

By: lema

lema — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 08:09:47 +0000

just to add to above – SmartPay is not a competitor to the existing Mobile Payments solutions but complements them; cheers

By: lema

lema — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 08:08:43 +0000

Hi Hash, great post, big fun of your blog. Not sure if you are aware of InMobi’s SmartPay, which solves what you describe above. Admittedly in Africa, it is currently live in just South Africa . http://www.inmobi.com/inmobiblog/2011/05/10/announcing-inmobi-smartpay%E2%84%A2-simple-intelligent-global-mobile-payments/

By: Leslie Onyesoh

Leslie Onyesoh — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 02:59:41 +0000

Concise and clear post: This is not only an African problem but an emerging market one. We are already working in this area and believe we’ve cracked it albeit we are a pre-revenue startup looking for funding in order to execute on our model and prototype. Would be interested to hear your thoughts.

By: HASH

HASH — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 15:19:03 +0000

Ben, I didn’t know it was only 500 enterprise/business partners on Mpesa. That’s a huge market they’re missing.