Kenya and East Africa has been facing weak ecommerce mainly due to that missing all-integrated
system that will enable users access services using a few trusted steps. Well, the opening is finally here with 3D Direct Pay. These guys are offering a one-off payment system that encompasses the usual main global payment systems plus Mpesa and Airtel money. Yes, they got the API and mpesa is seamless. 3G Direct Pay. 3G Direct pay has been in operation in East Africa since 2006, currently servine Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia. Its now that they have launched the mobile paymements as an oprion added to VISA, MasterCard, American Express, JCB and PayPal during checkout. Currencies include US Dollars, Euros, British Pounds, Swiss Francs, Australia Dollars, Canadian Dollars and Kenya Shillings.
They have previously served the service industry with online payment solutions, with around 250 providers and more than 10,000 payment transactions processed monthly locally and worldwide. I went through a demo of the payment both via the conventional means like paypal et al, mpesa and it was fast, very simple steps after clicking the pay button from the vendor’s website. Confirmation of payment to the vendor is also realtime. Businesses with the 3G Direct Pay account will link the pay platform with Mpesa and Airtel and these two will be options during checkout. The payment model uses an online invoicing system and allows for payment of any product or service provided by a merchant to their client. The system also features a high-end fraud prevention module where each transaction is scanned at real-time and receives an internal fraud ‘score’ based on dozens of different parameters such as card, customer, IP blacklist.
Main Services include:
The online checkout platform including integrated real-time payments services:
the end customer can shop online, select online the service, check out and pay online using
any credit card, PayPal or mobile payment.
The service is connected to online e-commerce websites, an example being Air Kenya
BOPO (Book offline, pay online):
This serves those with no ecommerce platforms and customers can make an enquiry for products. The vendor proceeds to create an online invoice that the customer will use to pay for goods and services. This is sent via mail.