Thus Spaketh Idd Salim

One API to rule them all

Code-Named Gandalf

Symbiotic Developer Labs will soon chip in its 2 bytes in the coding social social responsibility. Safaricom/Zain has NOT released or shown any signs of being in willingness or position to release any developer tools to enable the 17 real coding geniuses in Kenya, the thousand of wannabes and the tens of thousands of VB programmers monetize ANY of their systems.

Understandably, they are here to make money on voice and data. They don’t care about your pesky little ideas. Unless they are called ‘Mpesa’ and not yet patented. Ahem!

Currently, the only way to automate Mpesa/Zap is to use a Modem with the Mpesa SIM card then do some satanic message parsing. No more!!

As the head of the coding department in SMC, I have taken this personally and, unless the finger of god or the eye of the nebula intervenes, we will be releasing a PUBLIC API for Mpesa/Zap paybill.

The API will be available for public download and SMC will just be the aggregator. All settlemennts will be real-time. Yes. real-time. No 48-hour waits. {I still can’t understand some of these things! Ati 48 hours!!}

What about those who cant code

Of course, we cant all be coders, can we? If you are one of the millions of people who cant code, or ‘Ulikuwaga mnoma sana kitambo sana maJava na maC++ but umesahau’, then we also have good news for you. You will be able to open an online shop running off the ZungukaPay gateway and you will be able to monetize your content, time and skills.

We have one mission in mind

To enable ANYONE be able to monetize their content and abilities. To enable that sculptor from Machakos to be able to sell his curios online DIRECTLY to the buyer and realize maximum profits. Not via a proxy, getting short-changed. To enable that guy in Stall 25 Imenti house be able to sell his pirated DVDs online and get real-time payment.

As a user, your money will always be floating around Mpesa/Zap/PayPal/GC/WP… So far, no bank is willing to work with us because we are too small a company, but I am sure someone sane will soon wake up and smell the digital coffee.

Errr… Back to code.

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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…

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Well, we all know that Mpesa is

One Gateway to rule them all

widely used in Kenya, Tanzania and Afghanistan. Zap is available to the 22+ Zain One-Network Countries.

We also know that Paypal hates Africa.

Lastly, We know that Symbiotic Media Consortium has developed a working Payment Gateway that already links PayPal, Mpesa and Zap. Needless to say, there was no help or support at all from Safaricom, because safaricom knows as much about Mpesa as Wangechi.

So this presents a very clear advantage for players like Google to come into the Africa playing field. Africa has millions of people who have NO WAY doing e-commerce, unless they have credit-cards and can cheat Paypal to not be seen as originating from Africa, the Dark Continent full of thieves.

Using The Symbiotic Payment Platform, Google can rule the African Market and Leverage the un-tapped m/e-commerce. We know Google Loves Africa. She has Offices in Kenya.

This being a man-eat-man society where people just sleep and wait for others to think then steal the ideas, I will share no more, but will email it as a PDF to Google, detailing each and every step, hoping they will adopt it. They will. I know.

-Salim, Idd

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