ePay-Kenya: A Tried and Proven Way to Withdraw From PayPal in Kenya

January 28, 2012 By 1 Comment

The lack of a good and reliable way to withdraw money from PayPal in Kenya is one of the factors which hinder the average Kenyan’s potential to earn online most significantly. On Like Chapaa, we have had a long and hard struggle to try to find and identify the best way to withdraw from PayPal in Kenya. I believe that we have a contender for this title in e-Pay Kenya.

e-Pay Kenya opened its doors in January 2009 as e-pesa then rebranded in 2010 to ePAY-KENYA. Esther Kimani of e-Pay Kenya reached out to us to provide more information on what e-Pay does. This article is based on her information to us, and on good reports their customers.

e-Pay Kenya offers two ways to withdraw your hard-earned money:


1. Moneybookers
“We have an Merchant Agreement with Moneybookers allowing us to officially run a Money transfer website using their services. This explains why the moneybookers fee is lower (11%) than Paypal. We therefore do not operate under any fear of account limitation as we operate with blessings from Moneybookers. We deliver within the hour but often less,” says Esther Kimani of e-Pay Kenya.

2. Paypal
Esther continues, “We use a third-party gateway to avoid the direct interface with Paypal because we have experienced the danger of doing so (when we operated as e-pesa). This explains why the transaction charges are higher (14%) than Moneybookers but then our users enjoy the following benefits:

  1. Peace of mind when dealing with us as there is no possibility of our users’ accounts being limited by PayPal
  2. Our third-party gateway does fraud tests on our behalf to minimize fraudulent transactions.
  3. We have a strict KYC (Know Your Customer) policy. All our users have to send Identification Documents in order to have their accounts verified, thus allowing them to make transactions.
  4. We demand that users forward their Paypal Transaction Confirmation emails before they can cash their money. We use this document to authenticate the bona fide account holders. We have caught up with fraudsters who hack into unsuspecting paypal account holders’ accounts.
  5. Delivery within 24 hours but often less.”

Charges
The bulk of the fees are charged when you deposit money from Moneybookers/PayPal into e-Pay Kenya. Their charges at this time are as follows:

Moneybookers:

  • Deposit 11%
  • Withdrawal USD 3 irrespective of the amount

Paypal:

  • Deposit 14%
  • Withdraw USD 3 irrespective of the amount

Conclusion
It seems to me that e-Pay Kenya has a very well thought-out service. It is the best of all such businesses that I have come across so far. It is a bit pricey, but as we wait for PayPal to open itself up, e-Pay Kenya remains a good and reliable alternative.

What do you think of e-Pay Kenya?

ALERT
As far as I know, the REAL e-Pay Kenya is at: www.epay-kenya.com

NOT: www.epaykenya.com

pesaDroid

January 26, 2012 By 2 Comments

pesaDroidI came across a very interesting Android application for your mobile phone – pesaDroid.

As much as I loathe Safaricom sometimes, I cannot live without my MPESA. Problem is, MPESA text messages are deleted (by me) as soon as I get them …. which unfortunately means I often cannot keep a record of who paid me or what payments I made. Don’t even mention that I then have to spend Kshs 1/- to find out my MPESA balance. This is where pesaDroid comes in, it helps you to monitor your MPESA transactions. specifically, it offers the following features:

  1. Ability to scan your SMS inbox and retrieve MPESA transactions
  2. Ability to store the transaction data in an internal database so that evidence of a transaction persists even after the SMS is deleted.
  3. Ability to generate regular statements from these transactions
  4. Ability to send the statements to your email address.
  5. Ability to send us feedback for improvement of the service.

This nifty little app is available for sale on the Android market at Kshs 256.84

More information: pesaDroid

What do you think of pesaDroid?

No Sir, Don’t Get A Website!

January 25, 2012 By 10 Comments

Hands up if you are a “web designer” in Kenya. These days it seems that every other person on the streets does ‘websites’. Good for you, good for you (us?) all! It seems that it is boom time in Kenya as far as websites go. As many web designers as there are, there seems to [...]

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Learn to Code

January 24, 2012 By 13 Comments

In case you have not realised it yet, computer programming skills are as necessary for success today as reading and writing have been for the past few centuries. In fact, “You’re a second-class citizen if you don’t know how to read and write today, and in twenty or thirty years the same will be true [...]

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TrINC Money : MPESA-PayPal Service [Updated]

January 20, 2012 By 21 Comments

I was a bit hesitant to write about this new service after the rise and fall of PayMPESA, but here goes: Trinc Money seems to be a new service that allows you to transfer money to and from PayPal via MPESA. yes, this means that it lets you both withdraw and deposit money into PayPal [...]

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Strategic SEO

January 20, 2012 By 13 Comments

We all want our names, companies and products to come up when you search for them on Google, right? This is what SEO.; Search Engine Optimization – the art and science of making sure you are found when people search on Google and other search engines. I get clients asking me for this everyday. The [...]

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