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Western Union has announced a partnership with M-PESA, the popular Kenyan mobile cash-transfer service. This deal opens up Western Union’s huge money transfer network to the Safaricon-owned “mobile wallet” service. The parnership will allow customers in US, UK and other countries to transfer money to a Safaricom/M-Pesa user’s account and the receiver will receive an SMS message from M-PESA notifying them that the money is available in their account.

Kenyans living abroad can now send money to their relatives back home through Safaricom’s mobile money transfer service, M-Pesa.
This is after Safaricom and Western Union signed an agreement, which enables Kenyans living in 45 countries in the US, Asia, Europe and Africa to access the now world famous M-Pesa service.
Although they can send up to Sh35,000 per transaction, limits per day, per month or per year will depend on the country the money is sent from, following the link-up that is likely to give the NSE listed firm a head start in the increasingly competitive mobile telephony market.
“Through this partnership, our customers and their friends and families will benefit from affordable, faster and more convenient international remittances,” said Safaricom chief executive officer, Bob Collymore.
Mr David Yates, of Western Union, applauded the service as an impressive adoption of the mobile channel.
“Cash payout through M-Pesa is projected to go up from 23 per cent to 40 per cent, as the traditional cash payout will take the rest,” Mr Yates said.
The transaction is similar to a traditional cash-to-cash money transfer, except that the sender specifies the recipient’s mobile phone number at the time the funds are sent.

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Were you excited to hear that Google now has location-aware AdWords for Kenya and South Africa? I was overjoyed that Google is paying closer attention to African consumers and content producers, until Miguel pointed out one small issue:

Getting cash in African hands

[T]here is no mention of how people from Africa are to either pay for AdWords or for content publishers to be paid for AdSense displays. As I've mentioned before, Google has no practical payment set up for anywhere in all of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Google's lack of a payment system effects more than just its own customers - it holds back the entire web development community in Africa. How can organized efforts like Coded in Country or even personal projects hire Africans if we can't pay them?

Before you suggest Paypal, realize that it too does not support payments to anyone in Sub-Sahara Africa. It even actively harasses Americans in Africa who are legitimate, long-term customers, just because of their IP address.

Opportunity in Discrimination

Where others decry the lack of ePayment services, I like to look at an empty glass as opportunity - there is a demand for ePayment systems in Africa and the company that can fill this glass will be richly rewarded. But don't take my word for it. Here is Oluniyi David Ajao describing ePayments as the biggest business opportunity in West Africa:

Note that there are some limited international systems and a few decent nationwide systems in existance. Mac-Jordan has described Ghana’s cashless society and E-zwich, and Rachel's Bargain Corner see the emerging mPayment systems like Zap and M-PESA as a Kenyan eCommerce advantage.

But its a pan-African payment system that will, like David says, really empower intra-African eCommerce and online businesses - maybe even more than the current bandwidth bonanza.

Until then, this business opportunity is leaving cash on the table. Who will be the first to grab it?

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In my interview with Rachel Essendi, founder of the eCommerce marketplace, Rachel's Bargain Corner, she mentioned an interesting advantage that she felt differenced her site in Kenya.

None of the other shopping sites have an automated payment engine that integrates Zap and M-PESA. Our payment engine has set us apart from all the other shopping sites in the country.

This move towards mobile payment systems for web-based eCommerce sites is quite recent - previously they were all credit card driven. Which lead me to ask Rachel more questions, specifically around mobile payments. Her conclusion: both Zap and M-PESA give shoppers comfort and convenience unmatched by credit cards.

A new way to pay - online!

You take Zap and M-PESA, but not credit cards or Paypal. Why?

Rachel: This is a deliberate move and we have had some local publishers ask us the same question. Credit cards in Kenya are a preserve of the rich and we reckoned that this would turn off many Kenyans who don't have the same and usually associate the same with the rich.

Our target market is the majority of Kenyans and with the popularity of Zap and M-PESA in the country we wanted and continue to provide a solution that is relevant and one which the local market can identify with its all about our market.

Was it hard to get M-PESA or Zap? Do you feel they are enabling your site's growth?

M-PESA and Zap are the most popular money transfer modes in the country, this is because of their availability and ease of use, we are just riding on this technology that the mobile phone operators launched. What we did was to integrate the same into our web site. Most people identify with M-PESA and Zap and when they come to our site and see that we are supporting the same they find it easier to transact on our site.

Both Zap and M-PESA has enabled us to have our checkout system, without an efficient money transfer system we would not be able to offer a complete online shopping experience. The fees they charge are reasonable with Zap charges being lower than M-PESA, but the latter has more people on it.

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There's a new ecommerce site in Kenya, Rachel's Bargain Corner which claims to be the "complete online shopping experience in Kenya". With such a bold title, reminding me of Amazon.com's initial bravado, I've interviewed its founder Rachel Essendi, to find out more about its history and future:

Wizard of the Crow

How did the Rachel's Bargain Corner idea come about?

Rachel: Partly due to difficulty in getting employment and the thrill of trying out something new. I did a course in biomedical science and technology in university and completed the same in August 2007, I worked a bit in a laboratory before quitting but a job in the research agencies was not forthcoming and so i decided to start a business on my own, my husband who happens to be a partner in the business was for the idea also and he pledged to support me through out especially on the technical side of things.

What business capital (cash, connections, etc) did you need to get it started?

Rachel: In terms of cash we dint need much this was due to the fact that we are still based at home and all the technical work was done by my business partner Enock, while I worked to get and maintain the business connections and relations.

We started the business with the bare minimums including two laptops that Enock owned but decided to use in the business, one laptop started as the one hosting the payment engine and also served as our Internet proxy server and it was running on a Linux OS, and the other laptop we used to do our day to day work.

Was the Rachel's Bargain Corner site designed and coded in Kenya?

Rachel: The whole site and the associated support applications including the payment engine and the order management system were coded in Kenya by my business partner Enock. He has experience in system development having had short stints with two software development houses in the country. He hold a Bsc in Computer Science from Egerton University Kenya and he graduated in April 2007. He took some time off in April to work on the site and had it up and running beginning July this year. Enock is still doing the maintenance and further development of the site.

We choose to host our web site through a local hosting company that has very good terms and we started with a GPRS modem to provide for the internet connectivity.

After the Vote

How do you market an eCommerce site in a country that has low (5-10%?) Internet penetration?

Rachel: I've always believed that if you create a service that is useful to people, they will go all the way to try and access it. our target marketing avenues so far has been the print media and word of mouth - this is due to our limited budget when it comes to marketing and thus we are targeting any news outlets to create awareness about our presence and so far we have got the two leading media houses do our story.

Through the publishers that we started with we got some connections to media people and that enabled us to present our story to be put in one of the leading daily newspaper the Nation and has also enabled us to appear on a local Televison program called Zinduka aired on one of the leading broadcasters in the country Citizen TV.