Innovate or lose! (Courtesy/PesaPal)

Kenya’s fintech companies are innovating to bring small businesses into their fold

Mobile operators and electronic payment firms are focusing on the hundreds of thousands of small businesses in Kenya by introducing new products specifically aimed at paying for low-value card transactions with ease, speed, and convenience.

PesaPal, a Nairobi-based aggregator for online and mobile payments, recently introduced a mobile point of sale (mPOS) service known as Sabi (Pidgin English for ‘understand’) that would process payments in both local and US dollar currencies. Using their Android phones or tablets, the Visa or MasterCard payments are processed over Bluetooth by connecting to a portable terminal. The technology allows the over 300 businesses in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania that have signed up so far to view their transaction history and to issue receipts.

After launching POS systems to rival similar products like PayPal and Square to target large chains, PesaPal CEO Agosta Liko tells Quartz the mobile portal will tap into the potential of smaller businesses like barbershops, artisan furniture stores, gyms, and craft stores by allowing consumers to make payments from as little as one Kenyan shilling ($0.009). It’s a “big market. It’s a ridiculously big space,” Liko said. “So we are looking to that as a market that we would be able to serve reliably.”READ MORE

Source: https://qz.com/