The mobile business dynamics of Africa differs from those of Western Europe and U.S. and Canada. This calls for a radically different approach when it comes to technology and business in an African context. Accordingly, PesaPal, a payment gateway was developed and has been running successfully over the past few years. The company understood the poor state of credit card penetration in Kenya and is trying to help fill that void in a sector that is already crowded by MPesa (Safaricom), YuCash (Yu), Zap (Airtel) and Orange Money (Orange).
But this company wants to take the strategy to an enterprise level. So, developers and businesses can monetize their applications, by implementing online payments for goods and services. They want to stay in that domain and control it. This is what Pesapal wants to do differently. For instance, the current strategy is to go after a large untapped market – school fees. PesaPal is currently working with schools to enable parents to remit school fees using mobile payment platforms. This is a safe and convenient method, as opposed to the traditional methods of bank transfers and cheques.
Kenyan has advanced its mobile payment – Nigeria is just starting. But as this technology penetrates, there is going to be more innovations as more players come into it.
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