ONLINE PAYMENT OPTIONS FOR AFRICAN ENTERPRENUERS

Over the years, I have seen African enterpreneurs complain about the limited payment options available to them. The has made the cost of conducting business online high for the young Africa mind. Paypal which seems to be the world most used online payment system has been restricted from been used by sub-saharan Africa. In this article, I want to state some of the alternative payment system that can be used by Africans. Some of these alternatives have far more relaxed policies than paypal regarding how and where money can be sent, but they are more expensive and less flexible in operations.

Here are some practical solutions to countries where paypal is not available, or has limited availability.

VirtualTerminalNetwork: They are based in the US where most of their technical operations take place. They promise to be the Africa paypal, and currently they only provide their services to Nigerians. Their basic service charge is 2.5 percent plus N25. The minimum per transaction is N50. One of the terms of the website is that senders of money should not pay a fee. So you don't pay a fee when you send money but rather the recipient or merchant.

Alertpay: I first read about alertpay.com few years ago but because their service then wasn’t really encouraging compare to what I got from 2checkout I didn’t care to try them. When I visited the website early today it is obvious that they have improve their service alot.

Moneybookers is roughly equivalent to PayPal in features and it allows users to transfer their balance to any bank account in the world, or will mail a check in one of several currencies to an address of your choice. Incoming transfers are accompanied by insanely high fees in throughout Africa, but not as high as the fees to cash an international check. They solve the fraud problem by withholding ~7% of each transaction to cover refunds, but you can apply to opt out of this service after a certain period.

2Checkout is a credit card processor that allows anyone to set up a merchant account with them. Compared with other services, start-up feeds are low ($50), although they take a percentage of each transaction. Their preferred method of payment is a special MasterCard debit card that they mail to you and holds the balance of each transaction. You have to live in a country with ATMs that accept MasterCard (or Maestro), but it’s a viable alternative if you want to accept credit cards online.

iKobo is a money transfer service that, like 2Checkout, pays out via a debit card (VISA). Their business services are somewhat limited, although they appear to offer merchant accounts all over the world. Inter-African fees for transfers are about 6%, which makes it cheaper than Western Union, but more expensive than PayPal would be if it actually worked here.

NetTeller is a UK service that bills itself as a PayPal alternative. It appears to offer payments to just about every country in the world.

Others are
Digital River
TrialPay
e-junkie
e-gold
libertyreserve
fastcash
Please share your ideas on these payment service providers.