Yesterday I cam to learn that it is possible to receive money online in Kenya through I & M Bank. Their e-commerce processing solution is indeed impressive – you can have your website or shopping cart fully integrated with your bank account at I & M Bank.
However, I & M Bank’s set up fees start from around Kshs 160,000 (USD 2,000!!) $500 and Kshs 20,000 $50 – $100 a month plus a percentage of your transactions. A Mr. Reddy from I & M Bank confirmed these figures.
Let’s go back in time to the day that the wildly popular PayPal launched its services. On opening day, PayPal:
- Allowed any eBay seller to process payments online
- Was free to start using
- Had very minimal charges
That kind of strategy got PayPal to where it is today, an internet money processing behemoth. And they have made hundreds of millions of dollars to date.
I & M Bank does not get it! You cannot charge such outrageous sums of money and hope to grow your service beyond a handful of customers. I & M Bank’s service was launched early this year. It was launched at a time when their service was one of the only ones that worked. If their pricing was sensible they may have gotten more customers than they could have handled. They would also have entrenched their position and made it harder for any other payment processor to succeed in Kenya. But they did not.
Now PayPal works in Kenya and is rumored to be working with Equity for full integration early next year. What will happen to I & M bank then? Their short foray into e-commerce may come to a brutal end.
Update: E-commerce By I & M Bank.
KES.160,000….that is not exorbitant, it is daylight robbery. I pray that paypal’s partnership with Equity to come to fruition sooner so that Kenyans can finally enter the forays of ecommerce on the international arena.
I&M bank seem to have a strategy. The bank is said to have worked out a relationship with a technology company called Web Tribe Ltd to localize e-commerce. Web Tribe offers an online payment gateway called Jambopay which has MPESA and Zap besides VIsa.Charges and fee for retailers who go through I&M bank are very low. Paypal is coming to Kenya but Kenyan Technology companies have a way of getting around multinationals.