NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Friday, December 22, 2017

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.

Photo courtesy of Neil Palmer.