[kictanet] KENYA ’S ECONOMY HELD BACK BY LACK OF ONLINE PAYMENT AUTHORISA TION SYSTEMS

[bitange at jambo.co.ke]

Dear Lucy/Alice,
Treasury is piloting electronic payment system in three Ministries.  It is
not the Government that should tell Banks and other investors to develop a
payment gateway.  The Government is fulfilling its role by by providing
the policy and regulatory environment.  This is the very reason why you
should paticipate in Monday's meeting at Safari Park.

Safaricom is doing a great job trail blazing in e-momey.  In one of the
conferences this year I asked Bankers to embrace technology before it is
too late for them.  Perharps when they wake up they will all be
Mpesharing.

Regards


Bitange Ndemo.




> Alice,
>
> The ICT community is ready with the technology for payment gateways, but I
> dont see any movement on the Kenya Banking Law that needs to be revised to
> enable this to become a reality.
>
> Perhaps Bw. Ndemo can have a word with his counter-part in finace so they
> get ontop of this issue.  I would hate for TEAMS/eSSAY/Flag etc to become
> realities and find us as a country not ready to take full advantage, who
> knows perhaps the East African Integration will happen at about the same
> time, and we need to be ready to take advantage of a new 120+ million
> customers(and a whole lot more if Rwanda joins).
>
> So its just not the tourism industry that has a stake in this, we do too,
> question is how to get organized into a lobby group to make this a
> reality.
>
> LK
>
>
>
>>  KENYA’S ECONOMY HELD BACK BY LACK OF ONLINE PAYMENT AUTHORISATION
>> SYSTEMS
>> _____________________________________________________________________
>>
>> The Kenyan Government is putting its country forward as a place that is
>> open for business. It is moving to privatise both Telkom Kenya and
>> divest itself of Safaricom. It has moved with considerable speed to put
>> in place its own fibre project TEAMS. But parts of the private sector
>> are having difficulty keeping up with the idea of Kenya having an open,
>> modern economy.
>>
>> Although there are a couple of new entrants in the country’s banking
>> sector, it is largely dominated by international banks whose managements
>> defer to head office on innovation. This is going to cause the country a
>> problem if it wants to continue to remain competitive. It needs to be
>> able to offer its visitors the ability to pay for flights, hotels and
>> safaris online. If you book a Kenyan hotel, you still cannot pay online
>> for the booking.
>>
>> Sadly things have only moved on a little since Kenya Airways launched
>> its very successful online payment system using a South African bank.
>> Although many banks can issue credit cards, only a limited number can
>> authorise transactions and they have not shown any interest in setting
>> up the “back-end” payment authorisation systems required for onl


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