A Hypothetical user payment terminal

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Cashenvoy came to CCHUB to pitch this new mini POS terminal that would connect to a mobile app on the merchants’ phone. I was imagining something like that, but for users (instead of merchants).

Online payment (especially for digital products and services) in Nigeria sucks because of fear of exposing card details to hack and fraud.

So I’m thinking, if there was some kind of Pin Entry device/ user card processing terminal that they could use to complete transactions without exposing the card details (That should be the mantra, very loud mantra: “Send payments without exposing card details”). It could allay a lot of fears and potentially pull a lot of Nigerians into the Cashless Society.

How It Could Work:

The device is not tied to merchant account like regular POS terminals, it is like a mini ATM machine that completes transactions. Apart from the card processing chip, the devices has a simple operating system with user interface from which the user can complete transaction.

Possible flow:
1.) User initiates a transaction on a merchant’s website.

2.) The web user is asked to pay with Credit cards, mobile money wallet or PAYPAD (that’s what i called it)

  1. If the user selects the PAYPAD, a transaction ID from the merchant acquirers is generated and displayed to identify the transaction, transaction amount and merchant account. The user is asked to enter the transaction ID on his PAYPAD to complete the transaction.

  2. Once the ID is entered/received on/by the user’s device, the transaction amount is fetched and the user can complete the transaction with his PAYPAD.

  3. Once the payment is received from the device, the transaction is completed on the merchant’s web (or offline) terminal and the goods/services are released.

  4. Users can also use this device to recharge phone credits, pay bills and give offerings,etc. They can also use it to fund mobile money wallets so they don’t have to carry that device and their cards around as long as they have their mobile phones.

(Offline retailers can initiate transactions with the devices and customers can complete with their own devices through NFC, bluetooth, etc)

I imagined working with banks to issue the devices to users instead of going through the hassle of marketing and explaining it to users.

Imagine everyone that owns an ATM having that tiny device that allows them safely complete transactions WITHOUT fear exposing.

It turns out that executing something like this it’s not for small fishes who can’t navigate the CBN, NIBSS, PTSP licensing sea. But is it even viable?

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Nice thought experiment. How does the user interact with the Paypad? Is it some sort of system where they swipe their cards? If yes? That’s probably more cumbersome than NFC-based payments obtainable today and will likely be used by just the tech savvy (who, mind you, have no problems entering their card details online anyway). If cards are to be preregistered, then I see no difference between this and Google Wallet/Apple Pay. Oh, and those who will appreciate the latter are probably the tech savvy ones too. I don’t see people who are scared of using their card online saving its details onto a device they can misplace.

Perhaps I’m missing something. But if I’m not, I would say we don’t need to go through elaborate means like this (devices, new standards perhaps, etc) to convince people who haven’t bought into the idea of making payments with their cards to do so. It’s too expensive and has a hard limit to where it can scale before becoming irrelevant. Education, better awareness and patience is what we need.

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It could look something like this.We use chip and pin cards here in Nigeria but it could allow for swipe. To complete a transaction, choose “Pay with Paypad” on the site, it gives you a unique transaction id, if you enter the id on this device, it fetches the transaction amount, then you slot in your card, enter your pin and complete transaction.

For offline payments, it could also serve as the regular merchant POS (forget the NFC part). Another use case that could boost its acceptance is Church givings: Churches could have a permanent code that you can enter into the device to pay your tithes and offerings.

The aim is simply to enable embrace digital payment. The fact that they are entering pin securely into the device as opposed to typing and submitting it to “some” website will give them a feeling of control and security. The mantra would be “Transfer money and make payments safely without exposing your card details”. This could significantly increase cashless transaction and improve eCommerce and online payments.

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and yeah, it could be way thinner than that.

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I get you. It’s unfortunate that we have been sensitized by our payment providers and our environment in general on the importance of PINs (something I have never had to deal with when making transactions on foreign websites). Will doing away with PINs help with the adoption of ecommerce transactions in Nigeria? I don’t know, but developed societies seem to be getting along just fine without them.

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This is a long thing. Can you try and simplify your idea more. I can’t even try and use this in a supermarket where people queue to checkout. Imagine using this in shoprite the process it takes to finish a transaction self is another chapter.

Tweak it to beat NFC in terms of the time it.takes to complete a transaction

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Just about the same time it takes to complete to do a POS transaction.

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I know this is hypothetical but can the name be change from PAYPAD… because its the same with that of cashenvoy … www.paypad.com.ng

1 Like
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loool…no wahala.