You know how most online startups in Nigeria miss out on a good percentage of their revenue because many of their customers either still don’t have bank cards or still don’t feel comfortable paying for things online with their bank cards?
It gives me great pleasure to announce that those days may soon be over.
Paysob is a new payment service which allows your customers pay for your product or service using ordinary recharge cards which are available everywhere.
You can setup the service as easily as opening a Facebook account. And best of all, it’s completely free. There are no set-up cost and recurring monthly fees. You only pay a percentage of each payment you accept.
We’re currently in Private Beta. But you can check us out on www.paysob.com.
Reviews, comments and suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
So finally someone did it … Great job @Light, clean UI too
I was working on this some years ago, but I encountered some issues. I’m happy someone else did it … I have some questions, though;
How many people use online services and still buy recharge cards offline, and how frequent do they buy it, and is that number increasing or decreasing?
If they do, what kind of services do they (recharge card buyers) use online?
What kind of services/platform would be willing to be charged a 30% commission on the payments they receive (I can only think of gaming companies)?
Please, can you throw more light in these areas? I think this is a very interesting project, and you might need to educate potential merchants about what they can use PAYSOB for.
It’s good to see someone finally take a real shot at it. After looking through your website, I could not find details about how you got this to work. If you don’t mind, I’d like to know:
If you have some kind of partnership with telcos as per pin validation.
If there is a human component tired to your stack for pin verification.
If you are/how you are reselling recharge cards to get value back.
@87_chuks at the moment, payments can only be made via MTN recharge cards (i.e. typing in the unused PIN). I know using active topup will be really cool but we’ve not started in that direction yet.
@somtoifezue I can’t give details about the number of people buying recharge cards online/offline because I don’t know. What I do know is trying to bill people without bank cards.
While running Netsob (a paid subscription service), one of the major problems we had was billing. We had to bill undergrads and university aspirants in Nigeria, most of whom didn’t have bank cards. So we were billing them via a short code (which was the best available way to bill people without bank cards in Nigeria). However, with only a 12% payout on some networks and a 6-month wait on payouts and a terrible service: the frustration led us to build our own payment platform.
So yeah, I think a lot of businesses who have tried to bill users without bank cards in Nigeria will see this service as a step in the right direction. Businesses into app development, businesses running subscription service, businesses selling e-materials and many others who are simply trying to bill people without bank cards in NIgeria will really prefer this service to the other options available.
@ncodes We don’t have any partnership with telcos. I can’t really say how we handle the pin verification (company secret and all) but I’ll say this: the design is just like having a human component but we automated the process. That should point you in the right direction. And yes we resell the recharge cards in bulk to distributors at about 20-25% off.
@Light very interesting concept. I just subscribed to “Paysop for Developers” which is currently in private beta. Do you have an expected time frame when it would be open to a wider audience?
Would there be APIs for iOS and Android in the near future?
@87_chuks I started looking at using active topup for payment today. It’s tricky but let’s see where that goes.
@Nosa_O No time frame at the moment seeing that we just got into private beta. With regards to API, a recharge can be made by sending a HTTP GET request with the appropriate parameters to our server. So it can be easily integrated into any product/service without requiring any custom module.
The disparity between “card-holders” and “card-holders willing to pay with their card” is quite a margin. Talkless of non-card holders.
This is nice… But I think its convenience may be limited to micropayments… I can’t foresee myself scouting for 5k recharge card to buy a nice shirt on an eccommerce store…
I hear you @gabe. That’s exactly what my brother also said: No way I’m loading 50k recharge card to buy anything. So I also see that limitation.
I don’t think payment via recharge card will replace payment via bank cards. At best, they’ll work side by side. But I also don’t think bank cards is the way forward in Nigeria. But there’s a way forward: something as available as recharge cards and as convenient as bank cards. And that’s what we’re all working towards.
Micro Payment is actually a major issue. You can do a COD for your shirt.
I faced huge issues with receiving micro payment last year when trying to float Gospoteric, While this is not exactly the next “paypal”, it is something, something big. A service like Okada books will kill for this right now. @Light you should talk to them.
LOL. Please oh, the Payment demo is only for demonstrating how the payment system works. There’s no reward attached to it.
But I get your frustration @Dapo. I was looking at our records and I saw how thoroughly you tested the site. Please allow me to disclose it here to explain a bit about how our system works.
First off, I think @Dapo loaded a used card on Netsob subscription service. Netsob currently uses Paysob to accept recharge card payments so after Paysob processed the card, we sent him a reply that the card has already been used by another customer. Then he moved on to Paysob homepage and loaded the card again on the payment demo. But since we’ve already processed the card before, we knew it has already been used by another customer so we send him the same reply.
Then I think he went to get a new card and loaded it on the payment demo. The card was successfully processed for N100 and we informed him of that and told him he needed to load another N100 to complete his payment (we made the payment demo cost N200 to show that users can combine several cards to pay for your service in case your service costs more than any single recharge card denomination). But @Dapo loaded the same card again. And we replied this card has already been used by you.
At this point, I think he was probably convinced the system works and will catch any trick he throws at it but curious as to what will happen if he completes his payment, he loaded another N100 card and after successfully processing the card, we told him “You have successfully paid for this service. Thank you.”
Yea, even I would be alarmed.
Sorry @Dapo but no reward for the demo. It was simply to show you how the payment system works.
… Great job 
… I have some questions, though;
