Like Chapaa » Tips Hacking and Reviews

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

Kelvin — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 09:04:19 +0000

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:

Peace of mind when dealing with us as there is no possibility of our users’ accounts being limited by PayPal
Our third-party gateway does fraud tests on our behalf to minimize fraudulent transactions.
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.
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.
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

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pesaDroid

wham — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:32:58 +0000

I 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:

Ability to scan your SMS inbox and retrieve MPESA transactions
Ability to store the transaction data in an internal database so that evidence of a transaction persists even after the SMS is deleted.
Ability to generate regular statements from these transactions
Ability to send the statements to your email address.
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?

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TrINC Money : MPESA-PayPal Service [Updated]

Kelvin — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:08:22 +0000

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 using MPESA. Sounds good, eh?

Costs
Apart from the usual PayPal and MPESA fees, Trinc Money ~~charges what seems to be a~~ used to charge a standard flat Kshs 1000 transaction fee. Depending on how much you send, this can work out to be extremely cheap. But is it sustainable?

They have since updated their fees to 6.9% + KES.250

Sustainability
I worry about this service. Does it have the required blessing from PayPal? As far as I know, PayPal does not allow this kind of money transfer service. If your remember correctly, other services got around this issue by packaging themselves as selling “vouchers” which could be redeemed for money. This seems not to be the case with Trinc Money.

Additionally, PayPal is rumored to be very very close to launching fully in Kenya. Would this not outright kill TrincMoney?

I have reached out to Trinc Money for comment on both of the above.

I am sorry if I feel overly critical of TrINC Money, I am just being prudent. I am aware that PayPal frowns upon this kind of “money transfer” business working through PayPal and I would not want the readers of Like Chapaa to suffer any loss as a result of reading this article.

So, dear readers, what do you think of this? Has anyone tried to use Trinc Money?

Response from TrINC Money:

Trincmoney is neither a money transfer service nor a currency exchange service. What we do provide is a platform for registered PayPal users to send electronic PayPal value to the Trincmoney PayPal account. These funds are not withdrawn and are valid PayPal transactions initiated by registered PayPal users.

Upon a customer’s request, our service sends our customers electronic monetary value depicted in ones M-PESA Account representing an equal amount of Cash held by the MPESA Holding Company Limited and which may be redeemed through an M-PESA Agent for an equal amount of legal tender in the Republic of Kenya, to their MPESA registered mobile numbers. Note that MPESA electronic value is NOT legal tender.

With regard to money laundering, Trincmoney carries out the required due diligence on customers who send us money and who receive money from us.

If PayPal were to open up shop on Kenya it would be a blessing to a lot of people who use the Internet to send and receive money. Trincmoney will survive simply because a PayPal withdrawal takes 4 working days to effect while our service is effected within the hour. Also chances are that the charges will be higher.

I hope I have answered your queries. I have also read your blog on our service. Please note that we changed our rates and are now charging 6.9% + KES.250. Check out our Facebook Page and Twitter handle and sample some of our customer reviews.

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Two Kinds of People in The World

Kelvin — Wed, 04 May 2011 14:22:16 +0000

Just read an amazing article by Chris Dixon:

You’ve either started a company or you haven’t. ”Started” doesn’t mean joining as an early employee, or investing or advising or helping out. It means starting with no money, no help, no one who believes in you (except perhaps your closest friends and family), and building an organization from a borrowed cubicle with credit card debt and nowhere to sleep except the office. It almost invariably means being dismissed by arrogant investors who show up a half hour late, totally unprepared and then instead of saying “no” give you non-committal rejections like “we invest at later stage companies.” It means looking prospective employees in the eyes and convincing them to leave safe jobs, quit everything and throw their lot in with you. It means having pundits in the press and blogs who’ve never built anything criticize you and armchair quarterback your every mistake. It means lying awake at night worrying about running out of cash and having a constant knot in your stomach during the day fearing you’ll disappoint the few people who believed in you and validate your smug doubters.

I don’t care if you succeed or fail, if you are Bill Gates or an unknown entrepreneur who gave everything to make it work but didn’t manage to pull through. The important distinction is whether you risked everything, put your life on the line, made commitments to investors, employees, customers and friends, and tried – against all the forces in the world that try to keep new ideas down – to make something new.

Which kind are you?

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Is Your Business Failing?

Kelvin — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 13:41:29 +0000

“1. Is the site live yet?

Yes: you’re likely failing, but at least you’ve got a chance of getting some feedback from real, live users, which may, if you’re smart and perceptive, decrease your chance of failure a little bit.

No: you’re failing.

2. Do you have free customers yet?

Yes: well, now you have a shot to establish relationships. And if you listen carefully and not pridefully, you just may have a tiny chance of hearing them correctly and improving your customer experience from awful to plausibly bearable.

No: you’re failing.

3. Do you have paying customers yet?

Yes: congratulations! You have reduced your chances of failing from 100% to 99%. There are many more chances to fail along the way, but you have graduated to some of the more interesting ones. Good show!

No: you’re failing.

If, when you wake up in the morning, the answer to any of the above questions is “no”, then you’re failing. Not failing tomorrow, or next month, or next year, but failing right now, today. As you read this…. Now.

And what you need to do, what you must do, is to spend your entire day focused on changing the answers to yes. Desperately, immediately, fully.”

The above is taken from How can I tell if I am failing at my entrepreneurial venture or start-up? Which is a very inspiring article on how to tell if your online business is failing.

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How to Open a US Bank Account

Kelvin — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 04:10:17 +0000

This post was made possible by sobbayi.

There are many reasons why one may want to open a US bank account, including wanting to withdraw money from PayPal. Now to open a US based bank account as a none US resident is still possible.

The only catch is that you cannot open it online, you have to physically go into the bank with your passport and a second form of identification eg your DL (no need for social security number if you tell them you are not a resident).

You then fill the forms AT THE BANK and you set up you internet banking details right there as thats where all your transaction Bank transfers etc will take place.

Once you are done you must deposit some money into the account immediately and you will walk out with you temporary ATM card. You then need a Kenyan address and a US address. The US address is where they will send the permanent ATM card within 10 days and other documentation whenever they need to as they wont send it out of the country. Once you have your ATM card and are going back to Kenya there is a number you will need to call to activate your card to work in Kenya. Make sure you get that number before you leave the bank.

This information is based on Bank of America. (Not all banks offer accounts to non residents living abroad). Their ATM cards work just fine in Kenya but it will cost you 5 bucks ($5) per use so be careful.

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KBC Interactive Game Show Fraud (with pics)

Kelvin — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 04:37:43 +0000

This article was generously contributed by Mutwiri.

Earlier this month there was a huge debate on this forum about an error KTN had made on their interactive game show. The issue was with the simple arithmetic – 11 x 2 + 32 – 21 + 5 x 3 + 5 x 1 The answer that won cash was 120, which off course was WAY off.

Well, yesterday KBC ran something similar on their show.

23 – 12 x 5 + 112 – 20 + 3 x 8 + 12

The choices were -125, -170 and 250

I took screen shots:

The Question (click for larger)

The answer that won Kshs.50,000 was 250

So how did they arrive at 250? Here’s their calculation:

The Fraudulent answer (click for larger)

If you look at the pictures closely, KBC actually changed the question and then awarded 50,000/- to….”the winner”. Theft in broad daylight!

What are your thoughts on this? Where can a complaint be made?

Update
Even the fraudulent answer does NOT add up to 250!!!!

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The Best ISP in Kenya

Kelvin — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 09:07:27 +0000

A good and reliable Internet connection is pretty much essential these days. You need it for all sorts of things, including the ability to make real money online. Unfortunately, the state of ISPs (Internet Service Providers) in Kenya is very nearly pathetic. After some readers asked us to recommend good ISPs, we realised that we could not actually recommend anyone without giving a caveat. How sad, eh? So we decided to do some research and establish the truth about which company may actually be the best ISP in Kenya.

Our admittedly very limited research focused on the so called ‘big’ names:

Why did we do this?
Well, almost everyone we talked to felt that the ISP state in Kenya is just not right. Very few if any of the Kenyan ISPs do things right and the customer is at their complete mercy. It should be the other way round – they should be at our complete mercy.

This is our own little contribution towards that future. We hope to publish updates in the future as and when the situation changes. Please note that our review was limited to residential internet access and not the so called “corporate internet”. Many ISPs are totally different depending on what type of customer you are. Sigh.

The Best ISP
Unfortunately, and sadly, we did not find any one company that we could call “the bast”. Some seem very good, but all have painful problems associated with them. Sad tu sana, eh?

1. GOOD ISPs
A. Safaricom
It may come as quite the shock but currently Safaricom seems to be the among the best overall ISPs in the country. Safaricom offers internet via mobile modems, WiMAX, and fibre. Overall, people speak very well of Safaricom.

The Good:

Very fast Internet
Fairly stable and rarely goes down

The Bad:

When things go wrong, the customer often does not know who to cotnact for support – and the Safaricom customer care line rarely goes through. However, Safaricom seem to genuinely care about improving their customer care.
Safaricom is expensive.

B. Airtel
Airtel is another company whose reputation is mainly good. They currently offer internet via mobile modems.

The good:

They are affordable
Their service is mostly reliable

The bad:

Speed is really slow, sometimes becoming pathetic (i.e. the region of about 6Kbps or lower)

C. Access Kenya
Many people who deal with Access Kenya are quite happy. However there are some people who would highly recommend against them.

The good:

Fairly stable service
Fairly ok customer service

The bad:

It is a bit pricey
Relatively low speeds
It feels like it is an ISP that is slowly fading away to the competition as far as residential customers are concerned.

2. BAD ISPs
These are ISPs that we would not recommend for anyone, unfortunately. Of course these companies do have happy customers so they must be good to them but you should engage with them with extreme caution.

A. Orange
Orange’s bad reputation comes fro their mistreatment of customers. Complaints range from:

In the past, they have changed their rates suddenly and unexpectedly and inexplicably
There have been reports that a customer’s bandwidth runs out faster than it should
Slow speeds
VERY poor support

B. KDN
KDN is famous for its extremely poor customer service. They seems to focus on serving corporate customers at the expense of residential customers. However, they are known for offering good services (for while) but when things start going wrong (they always do), they really get bad.

C. ZUKU
Personally I have been using Zuku at home for a while. In spite of this, I find it extremely hard to give a positive review of their service. Why? Because as a customer, Zuku will give you a special kind of pain: internet that is so shaky it disconnects every few minutes and extremely unhelpful, inaccessible and poor support. Dealing with Zuku sometimes feels like being scammed. Proceed with caution.

3. Other ISPs
We have no direct experience with the following, but their reputation seems to be good:

Conclusion
It is said that Internet services in Kenya can be one of two things, but not both:

Reliable OR
Affordable

The sad truth is that, at present, if you want an internet connection that is reliable, even enjoyable, you must pay premium rates.

What are your experiences with ISPs in Kenya?

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How to Become an Expert in Your Customer’s Eyes

wham — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 07:59:16 +0000

One of the founders of this website (www.likechapaa.com) is a trained accountant. When we started Like Chapaa, it was very much (and still is) a for-profit venture. Along with wanting to help people, we wanted to make money with this site. Now, none of us was what you call a “computer” or “Internet”, or even “business” expert. But we believed in ourselves and we believed that we know how to do things with computers and the Internet that make business sense. The problem was how to convince people – our customers – that we really did know our stuff.

Are you faced with this problem? How do you become an expert in your customer’s eyes? How do you become the person the customer most wants to work with? How do you then increase prices 300% (which we have done) and still have customers wanting to work with you?

I mean, think about it. Would you hire a boring old accountant to do your website or even just improve it? Would you hire an accountant for anything other than accounting? That’s the kind of challenge that we faced. No one knew us as experts. Now, it didn’t matter how many times we looked in the mirror and called ourselves experts. We still were not getting any respect, let alone money in the bank. And it drove us crazy.

(For the record, I would personally not hire an accountant for anything but accounting!)

Interestingly, that is precisely why Like Chapaa was born. We thought that the easiest, fastest way to convince the world that we knew what we talked about was to start a site and write about the content of our brains. We started Like Chapaa to show the world what we knew. So yeah, we started pole pole but surely. We wrote articles. We used to get 7 visitors a day but we continued writing articles. Day after day, week after week. It was hard, extremely hard – and we had few, if any, successes right away.

Then it all changed. We suddenly started getting emails and calls. Emails and calls from people who wanted us to work on their websites, their Internet strategy, their projects, and so on. We had planned for this, but the success of our little plan shocks even us.

A lot of people struggle with marketing their business, and we did too. But we figured we could either go nuts calling people and walking the hard roads of Nairobi, or we could sit at our computers and write an article. And have a customer call. (Ooh, I did like the sound of that phone ringing). That is the power of the Internet, if you ask me.

Information is expertise – just ask any author; any consultant; any trainer. Just ask us.

The thing is, anyone can do this. You do not need any special qualifications; all you need is creativity, imagination and time. You have all three so go for it!

If you need any help you can always hire us to help you, you know?

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How to Increase Your Revenues By Reducing The Number of Customers

tranx — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 07:35:02 +0000

“Would you Cut the Number of Customers you have in Half if You Could Increase Your Revenue?”

On the surface, it seems like a strange question. As a business, more clients is always better than less clients (or so you think). But you have to remember where this question is coming from. What if you could successfully create a business in which you make the most money possible with the least amount of effort (and the headaches that go with it)?

The High Maintenance Client
Don’t get me wrong – you always want a lot of clients and it’s a good problem to have. However, you ideally want the best type of client. The high maintenance client is the WORST type of client because they take up all your time with calls, e-mails, fighting over bills, etc. The time you spend working with the client costs you more money than you ever make from that client.

The problem with high-maintenance clients is that they are very hard to identify. But the fact is that the more clients you have, the more high-maintenance clients, and the more headaches you have to deal with.

Double Your Prices and Lose 40% of Your Clients – Awesome!
This is one of the keys to creating a business in which you make the most money possible with the least amount of effort. Maximize the revenues from each client and if that means losing a lot of clients, you are ahead. Take a closer look at that statement.

Let’s say that you were charging your 50 clients Kshs 1,000 per month, so you were making Kshs 50,000 per month.

Now, let’s say that you doubled your price to Kshs 2,000 per month and because of that you lost 40%, or 20, clients. You still have 30 clients, paying Kshs 2,000 per month or Kshs 60,000 per month.

You lost 20 clients, which means less operations, less support, and less administration, etc. but you gained Kshs 10,000 per month! And that’s not just Kshs 10,000 total. With the reduced overhead and operational expenses, you probably gained even more than that in profits.

Even if you lost 60% of your clients and now made just Kshs 40,000 per month, but you reduced expenses by Kshs 10,000, you’re still ahead. You have more time and resources to commit to those activities that will bring you more money.

But before you just send out a letter to all our clients saying that you are doubling their prices, there are some things you should be aware of.

How and When to Raise Prices

Don’t Raise Prices in a Commodity Business. This strategy does not work if you have a commodity type business. If someone can go to your neighbor and get the same product for half the price, you will lose most of your customers. This only works if you have a niche product or service that is differentiated from what other companies offer.
Don’t Raise Prices on Existing Clients. The way that you can implement this strategy is on new clients. You will piss off a lot of existing clients if you raise their prices all of a sudden and it’s not worth it. But when you start marketing and selling to new clients, raise the prices on them. They do not know the old price so they will not be pissed off and while your conversion rates will be lower, you will see more revenues and less headaches in the long run.
Get Clients First. One of the first mistakes that we ran into when we tried to implement this strategy is that we did it on a new product that we were offering. It was a type of marketing website and while it was a good niche product that wasn’t commodity based, we had no idea what the market would bear. Looking back, we should have just started selling it very cheaply and then once we got some momentum, we would have raised the price to what we think the market would bear.

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