Thus Spaketh Idd Salim

Well, as usual, I don’t sugar-coat my thought so as to appear compliant and non-rebellious. Kama hupendi ukweli, enda Facebook na u-poke Arunga.

So, with all my un-dying love and admiration for Safaricom and the everlasting hope that one day they will hire me as a sweeper, I was perplexed the other day to find out that they had partnered with Western Union, KenTV and Provident Cap to enable someone from UK send money to you, via Mpesa. Ofcourse, as always, at the cost of an arm and a leg.

Story here

Mpesa Success Factors

Kenyans are cheap. And have cheap phones. So how do you make money from this cheap lot? Create a USSD service, like Mpesa. I somehow believe that this is why Safaricom has only Opened USSD access to MobilePlanet, its sister company. So that the REAL Kenyan hard-code coders don’t get to innovate. Imagine if USSD was OPEN? So, Unless you are hired my MP, Sorry, No USSD for you. But we all know. Real coders don’t get hired.

So, Mpesa was born. Actually not developed in Kenya. No public USSD access. Which did not surprise many. No one at MP is good enough to do a simple system like Mpesa.

Mpesa got it right. It works on USSD meaning everyone can use it. Perfect for Kenya. Perfect for Afghanistan.

I am sure if PesaPal or JamboPay or even Kasomo had done Mpesa, it would be fully automated and I would not have to wait for 48 hours for my KPLC bill to clear. I would have direct Mpesa- to-PayPal integration, Direct-and-2-way mpesa-to-bank integration and a fully automated Mpesa standing orders system to automatically send 50 bob airtime to all my friends every 6 hours.

This type of coding might seem complicated to beginners on coding, or even advanced VB coders, but it is stuff we do everyday for fun. Reverse engineering Mpesa, hacking the HTTP public stack they have and USSD menu automation to automate such stuff. We are about to release a public Mpesa API. Open-source, ofcourse.

I am also sure that If Kelly or Koros had configured those servers, you would NEVER have the 24-hour Mpesa down-times that cripple all your weekend plots. These guys KNOW their shiite. EuberAdmins. The capacity problems Safaricom always experiences is due to sending boys to do a man’s job. Talk of sending kindergarten kids to do KCSE.

What’s so funny?

This is how it works:

• Go to any of the 19 agent locations in the UK. Yes 19. In the whole of UK.
• Deposit money.
• Your person gets it on their mpesa.

“Well, this is the same way it works in Kenya”, You say, “Shida Iko wapi?”

The following are the problems that are NOT addressed by this model that I believe are already addressed by the PesaPals, LipaNets and JamboPays of this world.

• Safaricom is using a model that has succeeded in the 3rd world in a first world country, ignoring all the reasons-for-success in Kenya.
• Majority of the people in the 1st world countries have Credit-Cards. They can do all this online. why the African Agents model in the UK? Safaricom would do well in passing the automation baton to LipaNet so that all UK users can do this ONLINE. No agents! Simply Register a simple domain line www.mpesafromuktokenyawithoutusingwesternunionorkentvoranyoneelseforthatmatter.com and have people enter credit card details and you move that money directly to Mpesa. This is Free advice because even my 5 year old daughter can do that.

It really beats me.

Safaricom have ALL the money, well, most of it. Why don’t they consult with local talent while doing some if this solutions.. We come cheap and we are ok with sleeping at KenyaComfort. Hatupendi Hilton. Spending millions to invite foreign ‘consultants’ who know NOTHING about the African market and mobile dynamics.

End of rant;

Ohh.. Pole.. back to code.

Well, on march 11, I had the privilege and the pleasure of meeting the creme-de-la-creme of Kenya’s Mobile Industry. The MoMo Kenyan chapter if official BABY! SHe is alive and kicking in Kenya.

The list is endless, but top of my mind was Paul Kukubo, Mark Kaigwa, Pratik, Forrest, Aly Khan Satchu, Kaburo, Lewela, Ronald Meru, Timo, Leon Asoyo Oywero, Kemibaro, Erik Hersman, Caroline Juma, Norman Gombe, Oscar from Zain… Just to mention whose who smiled at me, shook my hand and spent some seconds to talk to me with either advice or questions.

Slowly, Idd Salim is becoming a celeb. Hehehehehehaters. Relaxini bana. Cant a brother get some recognition?

Hersmann stated that the world is waiting for the Kenya’s version of FacebookMobile, but with focus on Local content and trends. I told him about our Zunguka Mobile site and he was pleasantly surprised. I smiled thinking, “A black Facebook on steroids. If only Symbiotic had 1/6473868 of the development investment/budget of Facebook. But no one believes in Kenya. We have to fend for ourselves!! Innovative Geniuses doing hand-to-mouth programming with emphasis on code-for-food-and-rent.”

Mark as always was happy and enthusiastic about our products like Sembuse and TumaSMS and hoped that GotIssuez could do a collabo with Symbiotic. I asked only one Question? ‘Why not?’. There is alot of content repetition in Kenya. What we need is content aggregation. Nipe nikupe. As in, Symbiotic.

Moses Kemibaro, the man whose mind is not narrow and got words like the mighty sparrow was next. “Salim, congrats bana. Your website was ‘Kenyas Blog of the week’ in the Business Daily”. I had no idea! Thanks BDA. BDA march 11, page 17. Moses then Introduced me to the great Aly. Well, the Kenyan Version.

I was most likely speaking from a whole meter below the Tall Aly. I think he was standing on his Wallet. Nevertheless,  I am sure he got me verbatim when I Explained how he could use the Sembuse platform to monetize his NSE Stocks Data on rich.co.ke and rake millions. Make the data go to the people, not make people come to your website for data. He was all smiles. Watch this space.

Ronald of Adtel and Norman of IMS told me sweet things I like hearing about some things we call USSD, MONEY and CHAPAA.

And then came a God-sent moment. No, not me finally speaking to a Female. I was doing dudes all night jana. I met this guy whose jobbo is to get poor and orphaned kids from slums and teach them photo-shop, web design etc, and then empower them to be self-reliant with web jobs. I told him about Symbiotic being a Company formed by Old Boys from Starehe, understand sponsorship and charity to the letter.

We are pamojaz with him and we got no Issuez with helping. I also suggested he talks to MobilePlanet. What I hear is that Safaricom has given ONLY mobile planet access to USSD and locked out all the other developers and PRSPS and these kids could really benefit from knowledge of USSD coding. maybe at last in Kenya, we can see more innovative solutions on USSD rather than wait for a Semeni every 3 years. [Btw, i have no beef with Semeni and I believe it is a great solution. It is actually named after Semenya, a real champion of the people. But come on, this is Kenya. We have the best coders and thinkers on earth. Am sure we can do better if these APIs are opened.]. Or maybe my Informer meant Safaricon, and I heard Safaricom. I stand corrected.

Speaking of our Beloved Saf, I did not meet anyone from Safaricom at MoMo. Either they were not there, ama maybe tu ni network haikuwa.

Oscar, Bi Juma and the rest of the esteemed Salim-meeters were all positive and I am sure all this will come to a good end. Or is it a start?

Only time will tell.

Err, Code time it is.

March 18, 2010.

It is the Tandaa Local Content Conference today in Nairobi. Thanks to ICT Board again.

I am at iHub Kenya and just heard Wanyama [@kenyafreelancer], say “What more do we Kenyans want? We have Fibre now”

I am at iHub Kenya and just heard Cynthia Muyoti of FabGuru , say “Facebook has made my business better? 1391 fans todate and I am soon expanding my Shoes Business”

Seated next to me is Agosta Liko, Mbugua Njihia and John Karanja. I hear talk after talk. Aly Khan Satchu talks about how anyone can be rich and gives examples.

So I brainstorm with fellow coders and the question becomes; ‘How can Kenyan Coders be rich?’. Not the “i can afford to go out and i own a toyota” rich. Or the “I pay all my bills and my rent is always paid on time” rich. How about the “I look at the food names on the menu, not the price before I order rich”, or the “I am undecided whether to drive my Range or my Mustang today rich”.

50 Cent said ‘get rich or die trying’ [GRODT], but I tell you, try ‘get rich or get rich’ [GRoGR]. We are in a position never experienced before. So, for free as usual, I will list the top 10 opportunities that are there open-legged and wet and just waiting for Kenyan coders to smell the coffee and dive in and start making the old-Money conglomerate wish they could impregnate their daughters.Only coders?? Naaah! ANYONE can jump into the eChapaa bandwagon. It is free and there for everyone.

My Top 10

1. Local Digital Content – Yes. Content is the buzzword. Enough Said. Anything you know [Yes, am speaking to Pamela, Wangechi and Anyanche] is sellable. Just grab word-press and google-checkout and walla!
2. Content Discovery Tools – Coders. The challenge is yours. Java Applications, Desktop Applications. There is over KSHS 100M not made per month by PRSPs because of lack of content discovery tools. That is why the guys down South are inviting  likes of Symbiotic to go down there and consult on HOW to convert content and knowledge into wallet-content.
3. Mobile Apps – Think of anything useful as a mobile phone app and there are 100, 000 people who NEED it and will PAY 20 bob each for it.
4. Mobile Games – Here we go again. the limit is only your imagination. grab a keyboard and write some code!! Stop these silly excuses that ‘programming is hard’. I got a miserable B in KCSE and can code, sembuse wewe!! But whatever you do, please don’t use VB.
5. Hacking and Security – The silence is deafening, but the hackers are on their way. Be equipped to defend Kenya. Your hacking knowledge will be invaluable in 3-6 months time. Tick.. tock…
6. Animation and Design – Some foreign jamaaz came here, partnered with HomeBoyz Studions and now are making millions of dollars per month. What are Kenyans doing? Facebook all day and complaining about how hard life is, how much of a a parent-hater Esther Arunga is and how much money Ruto is stealing. Kaeni papo hapo.
7. Kenyan Social Networks – YES. I said it. You can start your own Facebook tomorrow and become rich like crazy. There are 4M Kenyans with an Internet Connections. This number grows by the day. there are only 580, 000 kenyans on facebook. This is 14.5% percent of Kenyans with Internet. So what are the other 85.5% doing? Waiting for you to give them something better. Something Kenyan. Something more contextual. Lala tu.
8. Adult Sites – Ati Eish? We all know Kenyan is the mdinyano capital of East Africa. An average slut makes KSHS 2, 500 per night. And those are the cheap ones. Connect the clients and the vendors. Simple as! I wont say anything more.
9. eParty – Bring clubbing to the mobile phone. Hook people up to YOU on thursdays, fridays and sato. Just charge each user 10 bob per week. Kenyans will pay.
10. Your own WebTV Show – If you are that Kibera guy who can dance like MJ or that Kileleshwa bathroom singer, get heard online! Make some money. Sell yourself!

So maswali ni, what do KENYANS want! Are you going to waste all day thinking up cocky status updates for facebook and poking strangers who you mean NOTHING to, or are you going to monetize your time? Are you going to waste your life away in the digital world, or are you going to focus on what will really make your momma smile in public pointing at you and say, “yeah! that’s my baby!”. Are you going to complain all day about the government, corruption, the kaanjo and these bloody foreigners, or are you going to take control of your life?

Amua mwenyewe!

Ehh, back to code! Pole timo.

Kenyan coders are all smiles. The real die-hards like Kasomo and Salim cant stand up OK because the erection that the new Mpesa move generates has taken all the blood from the legs. We have been waiting for this. Now it is Here! With one blow of the keyboard, The Mighty Safaricom (not to be confused with the satanic Safaricon), have finally made our wishes come true.

We, at Symbiotic, can now finalize our ZungukaPay payment gateway and overtake all the wannabes in the market.

“What has Safaricom done, Salim?!!”, You ask

Well, something they should have done even before Semenya started growing hard Female nipples. Safaricom, of late, have decided to attach the Number of the Money Sender and Money receiver in the M-Pesa mReceipt. How simple is that, to the un-educated eye!! How cool is that to payment gateways developers!!

Maybe, even the guys at Safaricom did it accidentally, but let me not spoil this post.

Now I will have to re-do the payment modules I had done for TumaSMS, Sembuse, Sovaya and Zunguka… But I aint complaining.

Now I have a clear and valid reason to apply for a Safaricom Mpesa Business Account.

I will blog once the payment gateway is done.

Kudos Safaricom!

Tick… tock… Tick… tock… Goes my HackOmeter. “Have they been hit yet?”, I ask myself. I switch on the TV to see if a Kenyan Bank has yet been hit. “Not yet”, I conclude. “I see voluptuous women flaunting naked in the streets an on bill boards. Soon the rapists are coming.”, I tell my friends. And Ohh, what a sad day it will be.

The Topic for today is SMS Banking.

What it is MEANT to do:

SMS banking is a remote banking service via mobile phones. Upon each money withdrawal operation with a card account (purchase using a card, cash withdrawal in an ATM), the client connected to the SMS Bank system receives an SMS message with information on the transaction. Such SMS message usually includes the charged amount, part of the credit card number, date, time, and place of the transaction (shop or ATM location). Full stop! That is what SMS Banking was meant to be, should Be and Must remain as.

What is has been ABUSED to be:

But hang on, there. What about these services all over the news that allow a user to check balances, transfer money, stop checks etc, all from SMS (or USSD as the case of Equity and Barclays) ? Isn’t that what SMS banking really is?

Well, this is classic example Security Through Obscurity.  Like walking at Tom Mboya at 2am waving a KSHS 1000 Note and reaching home safe. You won’t do that for long.

Shamelessly stolen from The RSA Website, :

We have all read about the iPhone and Blackberry SMS attacks and vulnerabilities. There is current commercially available (let alone black market) software that allows eaves dropping and spoofing of SMS. The lack of SMS confidentiality has been established by congressional members, city mayors, and international government officials in dozens of cases where their text messages were intercepted and made public. Like landline communication, cell phone communications including SMS should be considered to have no confidentiality.

An SMS can be:

• Intercepted on its way from your phone to Zain/Safaricon/Safaricom.
• Changed and edited [The content, the destination Numbers, The Source Number etc].
• Delayed.
• Deflected and even deleted before it ever gets there.

This can be done with equipment that cost less than USD 10, 000 and also with techniques that anyone who knows the difference between Hellon and Arunga can master in a week.

How Can this be done?

There are 3 Knows ways to Intercept communication between 2 sources that are sent via SMS:

• Phone cloning – The best. Totally bamboozles the MSP Cell Towers [Saf/Zain]. They see two phones with same phone number, MIN and ESN. Very effective on CDMA networks but not as effective on GSM – More Info -
• SIM Copying – VERY Illegal because it is 100% efficient. Clones the SIM and yours becomes active whereas the clone is dormant but receives copies of all your SMS and calls.
• Patched Firmware  – A very easy and common method is for a hacker to upload a super-firmware to their phone. This upgrade turns their phone into a super-phone radio transmitter and they can receive SMSes that are addressed to THEM and people AROUND them. You can really have fun with this at a club, a mall or a bus-stop.

Ever been robbed or attacked then the assailants returned your phone / SIM? Chances are you got cloned and All your phone-calls [as long as you are on the same Cell Area] and ALL your SMSES [irrespective], get delivered to YOU real phone and its clone.

Where is the problem?

Ok. Enough phone hacking lessons. For those dumb enough not to grasp where the problem is, so far, please, allow me to reiterate:

• Your SMSes are neither CONFIDENTIAL nor PERSONAL. Get over it! In a recent article about how guys from SafCon sell data call and SMS records shows the first level of breach. Your data can be bought!
• Your SMSes can be intercepted by hackers. SafCon can fire all those name-spoilers they hire, but your information is only secure from humans. It is NOT digitally secure. SMS and USSD traffic is rarely encrypted, if ever.

What is MY problem?

Just your money, my reader. You dont want all your hard-eraned cash to end up in Nigeria, do you?

Why doesnt Safcon [Not to be confused with Safaricom] etc do something?

Honestly, not their problem. You send SMSes, they make money. And it is not their mandate to SECURE these systems. they offer the ROAD. If you get an accident on it, hard luck!

Is All Lost in the Mobile Banking Sector?

Not by a long shot. But that is a topic for another day, or you can skype/gmail/yahoo me @iddsalim so tell you HOW Symbiotic is Countering this menace. Power through serious code..

Adios!

Back to code!

In a previous Post, I talked about how Google could use GoogleCheckOut to monetize Africa and do a 2-fold win-win move:

• Help Millions if Africans access e-Commerce and sell to the world, as opposed to locally.
• Enable Google take a big chuck of the millions of USDs sent from US/Europe back home to Africa.

I also talked about the blacklistic that payPal does for African IPs. So bubbling with Ideas and possibilities, I approached CK [of Google Kenya and not DjCk]. Google is your friend, right? Ohh how wrong I was!

CK Made it clear to me that [Quoting the chat]:

• unfortunately we [google] are not ready for monetization in Africa
• even if we were to monetize the entire existing online population in sub-saharan africa, it would not be a significant amount.

So, apparently, Africa is too small for Google. I thought not. So I googled (sic!) some facts about Africa Remittances and what I foind blew my mind. According to this report, :

Kenyans in the diaspora are contributing an equivalent of 3.8 per cent of national income through remittances.

In the year 2004, for instance, Kenyans living and working abroad remitted about Ksh35 billion ($464 million), which overshadows the net foreign direct investment (FDI) of Ksh3.6 billion ($50.4 million), which accounted for 0.41 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.

More recently,  [According to this]:

Despite the global recession, remittances by Kenyans abroad, a key source of hard currency, grew 6.6 per cent to $611 million (Sh49 billion) last year, Central Bank has said.

However, the growth was much slower than the 41 per cent rise the previous year [2007] when the remittances stood at $573.6 million (Sh46 billion).

The figure above oscillates between .6B and 1B USD depending on the source.

So, WHERE IS THE OPPORTUNITY FOR PAYPAL?

I believe that internet has reached sign-up saturation… people no longer jump to a bandwagon and register with no clear benefits. They now need a REASON. Free email sevices like yahoo and lycos had a boom because they had that UNIQUE offering.. FREE. Sadly, FREE is no longer a selling point nowadays.. people need to feed the fundamental human urge.. the urge to trade.

If a big player [PayPal] could use TRADE as a reason to get people online, this would be a winner. You know africans. We NEED a valid and convincing REASON to do anything constructive.

Trust me… Wangechi will not get online to poke Otieno… but tell her that Otieno will pay… she will log on to your site faster than you can say Paypal. Think of all the possible implementations of MicroPayment and MicroLending for social and business reasons in a typical African/Kenyan setup.

I will seek audiences with Menekse and the like and see if this cross-continent trade with Paypal Linking to Zap and Mpesa using our hand-made KuKanja Payment gateway can be made a reality.

More later…

My 5 year old daughter, Nuria, came to my coderoom, on the morning of Jan 1, as I was debugging the jQuery bits of the Hot96 Fm Website that Mbugua decided I should do personally. She said, ‘Happy New Year Daddy!’…. Hmmn, I look at her suggestive smile deciphered the stenography on it.

I remembered, ‘Ohh, it is Baby Shazma’s 1st Birthday!!’.  Shazma has now made 1 year and even though she has Flu, it has not stopped her from walking with support and saying ‘Baba’, ‘Mama’, ‘Java’ and ocassionally, ‘Gog’ when the Dogs outside Bark. Nuria wanted a big cake bought ‘for the baby’.

So I asked myself, ‘Salim. New year. Same stuff?’. Nooot! And I came up with a few resolutions. The resolutions are nothing as drastic as ‘I will start using IE’ or ‘I will code in VB’. They are now as sacrilegious as ‘I will start Support Man Urinals’ or ‘I will Insult a server by Installing Windows on it.’. No! They are well calculated steps and decisions based on advice and lectures from well-wishers that I am sure will make me a better Coder, Daddy, Gunner, Haxor, Business man and person.

• Do What PO told me. Stop Selling technology. Sell Solutions. Adapt the ‘you tell me what you want and i will build it’ approach. Ditch the ‘We have these solution that you might need’ approach.
• Do What PO told me 2. Wake up every morning hungry for more! Don’t celebrate Jana’s success today. That is the past. Break new grounds every day. Day! Not Week.
• Do What PO told me 3. Stop learning! I already know enough to develop any web/desktop/mobile solution. learning and meeting investors kills my time. Focus on the solutions and fine-tune them. Make them user friendly.
• Do What PO told me 4. Stop working from home! Kids, TV, Pool, Neighbours. Too much distractions. Until my Kitisuru home is complete, I will go work from office everyday. wake up daily at 4am and sleep not ater than 12am.

• Do What Daniels told me 1. Business Acumen. I am good in technical stuff, but I sometimes leave clients more confused when I throw some terms like MiTMA or NMAP in an explanation. I need to find a business writer for alot of my paperwork.

• Do What Rashid told me 1. Salat! I missed alot of prayers last year and even my Fasting was flawed. I need to become more religious this time round. Allah’s blessings come to those who seek them.
• Take my pool professional. Will actively participate on all pool tournaments in East Africa. Will enable me travel more and also meet new people on a social setup.
• Do what Jude/Rashid Told me. Get married. make everything official.
• Do what Kelly Told me. My hacking skills are good and natural. We need to setup an organization to legally and ethically offer serious security consultancy to willing banks, corporates, ISPs and individuals.

That’s  all folks.

Alot of times, I have been stopped on the streets [on my way to Laico for lunch] by many a coders with the same question. ‘Salim, I want to make money using SMS shortcodes and tun my own campaign ya kulipua mabilioni kama ile ya Safaricon. Nidosike kama Sebi na ninunue Kompressor sita za pink.’

So, being the big brother I am to a few, I always cancel my lunch and take the person to Savanna Loita, and explain it all.

• How it works
• How much money once can make
• What different types of billings are available
• What are the best people to partner with to get value
• How to promote your service

Now, After the Arsenal Loss, I woke up refreshed and sober. I can share this with the public. So here we go.

Premium rate SMS services are a value-add SMS revenue model for Mobile Service Providers (MSP) customers, that is run by Premium Rate Service Providers (PRSP) and Content Providers (CP) to drive revenue via SMS and SMS-related services.

By Law, MSPs (Safaricon, Zain, YU, ME, Orange and PineApple) are not allowed to run ANY shortcode business directly or indirectly, as this would kill the small players (But we all know SafCom does it anyway, huh?)

To become a PRSP, you will need to pay KSHS 210, 000 to CCK for a license, and renew it anually for KSHS 100, 000. This allows you to book Shortcodes with the MSPs. If you dont have 210, 000, you can become a content provider and book a shortcode from a PRSP.

There are two types of shortcodes in Kenya.

• Golden Shortcodes : (e.g.) 5050, 8008, 4441. Easy to remember, cute on the eye and cost KSHS 200, 000 application and a monthly of KSHS 10, 000 per month, per Network + VAT.
• Normal Shortcodes : (e.g.) 4034, 2346, 4659 etc. Kawaida shortcodes for KSHS 10, 000 per month, per Network + VAT.

So if you want to run a normal shortcode on 2 networks (e.g. SafariCon and Zain), you need KSHS 20, 000 + VAT per month and you FULLY own the shortcode and can run your own services on it and rake in cash, as long as you can advertise them and make them popular.

So, Where is the money?

When you book a short-code, you need to decide the following:

• What Billing band should it be? – Bands start from KSHS 3.5 per SMS where you make 0 (Read Zero) Shillings to one that the client gets charged around 100 bob per SMS. Most people settle for KSHS 10 to KSHS 60.
• Should it be MO-billed, MT-billed or MO-MT billed? MO-Billed means user MUST have the money e.g. the 10 bob, on their phone before engaging you. MT means user gets billed once SMS lands on their phones. MO-MT is obvious. Means user gets billed half on send and half on receive.
• How much money you want to make. Obvious huh?

So, How much money Do I Keep?

Well, I was hoping we dont fika here. This is the saddest part of the entire business. Normally, based on whether you are a PRSP or a CP, the moneymatics are as follows:

• Unless you have received 1, 000, 000 SMSes on your shortcode, the MSP takes 50% revenue, PRSP takes between 10-30% of the remaining 50%. So, if you are charging 20 bob per SMS, you take home between 7-9 bob per SMS, PRSP takes between 1 to 3 bob and Safaricon takes 10 bob; bila adabu.
• Zain have a better deal at 30% if your volumes are high.

Errrr, yeah. I will answer the rest personally.

Back to code.