[kictanet] M-PESA for E-Commerce

Odhiambo Washington odhiambo at gmail.com
Fri Mar 7 08:19:43 EAT 2008


On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 6:46 AM, Michael Joseph <MJoseph at safaricom.co.ke>
wrote:

> Alex:
>
> Why are you afraid? Bill asked a question and we answered it. We could
> have ignored it but we felt it was good to contribute. We are continuing
> to develop M-Pesa and this functionality has been in development for
> some time. We even see a direct connection to the internet for customers
> to pay on-line just by clicking a link to M-Pesa.
>
> Why is everything we do bad? Just because we are big? We got that way by
> listening to our customers and delivering products and services that
> they wanted and would use.
>
> Regards,
>
> Michael
>
> CEO
> Safaricom Limited
>

Hello MJ,

I think you slightly missed the point there. Gakuru is obviously right. It's
only you who may not admit the facts regarding his fears, but I want to
believe his fears are well founded.
I am not playing Alex Gakuru's advocate but what I believe he meant to say
was the fact that Safaricom would not be willing to let entities like the
original poster of this thread to take advantage of a service like M-PESA in
a way that Safaricom would feel is in direct competition with it.
When I initially responded to Harrison Karanja Kairo, the OP, and mentioned
that he could consult with the product's R&D team at Safaricom, I did say,
in my initial response something like "I am not sure they are
allowed/willing to work with you on this as I already see securityissues
coming up". I was expressing the same fears as Alex in a "diplomatic"
manner. Perhaps you can prove me wrong, but what Harrison Karanja had wanted
was something akin to grabbing that magic code that accompies an M-PESA
transaction and use it to validate a transaction. So, if only to prove
Gakuru wrong, could you kindly ask Pauline Vaughan to help the OP (one,
Harrison Karanja) with the necessary advise regarding his query? I don't
think that will be easy for you, as you are likely to let go of something
you see already as a great business product, no?

Gakuru did not at all say Safaricom is bad. Well, Safaricom is big, for sure
as you say, and since you know it, let me also tell you that it's so big
that it's getting out of control as you are no longer quite capable of
efficiently "listening to the large number of clientele whenever they have
problems". This has come up before during a discussion on outsourcing. So
when you talk of "big", please also consider being "big" in serving the
customers, and potential competitors like Harrison.

Just my 2 cents, which you can credit to my M-PESA account below:-)


-- 
Best regards,
Odhiambo WASHINGTON,
Nairobi,KE
+254733744121/+254722743223
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

"Oh My God! They killed init! You Bastards!"
                       --from a /. post
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