Kenyan Business Transactions Heavily Going Mobile

Kopo Kopo  is not another mobile wallet. It’s a software as a service platform that enables businesses to aggregate and manage transaction data that supports Safaricom M-Pesa and Airtel Money corporate accounts in Kenya, including matching it to customer accounts or importing it into their systems. Any businesses or SMEs or individual can integrate the Kopo Kopo mobile payments into their systems.

The cross-network service handles all the work of aggregating mass mobile payment data within Kenya on phone and online, thereby enabling organisations to simply manage the data or integrate it into their systems via web; transactions are be accessible online so long as they set up an account with Kopo Kopo and can be viewed either daily, weekly or monthly. It’s even possible for a firm to pay its clients, suppliers or staff using Kopo Kopo software as a service system as it shows all the transactions in detail just like a bank statement would.The software as a service costs from around Kshs 2,500 ($ 30) for professional, Ksh 5,000 for premier account while Kshs 25, 000 ($ 295) for enterprises and there is also a free starter account for individual users on pay as you go standards.

According to Ben Lyon, VP Business Development at Kopo Kopo,”the system uses the mobile money transfers systems like Mpesa and Zap and allows retailers or merchants to run accounts with them to enable them receive money from their clients on the mobile platform This cloud software helps the firms avoid the processes required and time in banking halls, insecurity of muggers and a bye to the wallet”. He adds that the firm doesn’t not compete the mobile money platforms but supplements their system as many of this innovations don’t allow transactions over the maximum number like M-Pesa’s 140,000 and not everyone gets a pay bill number even making it harder for merchants and local traders who want to use the mobile money platform in their transactions.

Therefore moved even by lack of credit cards in sub Saharan Africa, the firm began humbly in the US and in November 2010 set base in the country and is already changing the lives of several individuals, retailers and e-commerce sites that use the mobile phone in their day to day transactions due to this. It’s even making employees get paid on their mobile phones. This low cost subscription software makes it possible for any business to accept mobile payments as; “Mobile phones are more accessible than water and electricity in most of the emerging world, and now with new mobile prepaid payment systems, run by mobile operators, consumers can send money from their Kopo Kopo integrated mobile phones as a cash alternative”. But this firm is not alone in the market.

Cellulant’s Lipuka ,Moca and Zege Tech  and several others have entered the money transfer system in the country following the entry of Mpesa which started in 2007 in Kenya  now with close to 30,000 agents countrywide and has now spread to most parts of the world it being immediately taken up by Airtel as Zap and MTN as Mobile Money and mother firm Vodafone also has M-Pesa in Tanzania. Today, over 70% of Kenyan’s who have mobile phones buy and sell using their phones and mobile transfers alone add up 20% of the countries GDP.This has led to major financial institutions to reserve mobile money counters even others like Equity, Coop Bank,KCB among others offering mobile payment options for its clients. Internationally, firms have not been left behind.

Giants Visa and Master Card both with regional offices here have taken a move too to share the mobile cake as MasterCard recently ventured into the mobile money service in a service dubbed the MasterCard Mobile Money Partnership Program to help more than 2.5 billion financially-underserved consumers worldwide gain access to formal financial services through their mobile phones in the emerging markets. The firm will be working with Comviva, Sybase 365 and Utiba, firms which have been working to give financial empowerment to mobile phone users and to enable consumers to purchase goods and services via their mobile phones at millions of brick and mortar and online merchants worldwide, as well as transfer funds and pay bills just like what Kopo Kopo is doing for Kenya’s Mpesa, YU Cash, Airtel Money among others.

These firms are heading mobile because of the accessibility of the mobile phone which is owned by seven out of ten compared to only about half of the world’s households with bank accounts. According to Juniper Research, the combined market for all types of mobile payments is expected to reach more than $600B globally by 2013, double the current figure. The five billion mobile phone users worldwide, this program provides powerful, smart and convenient new payment options to people through a device that’s already in the palm of their hands today,” said Mung Ki Woo, Group Executive, Mobile, MasterCard Worldwide.

Today, Kopo Kopo is expanding its scope to reach out to more SMEs, MFIs and SACCOs and retailers like super markets, retail outlets, and hospitals and by 2015 it aims at being the leading mobile payment gateway throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.