[kictanet] Kenya Greylisted- Paypal, Credit Cards-confirmed

Thu Feb 9 11:09:58 EAT 2012

Liko/Listers,

Just recieved some authoritative position on the above.  Yes, we are not  (yet) blacklisted.  We are however, grey-listed, meaning some payment solution providers will not touch our digital space.  In this instance, PayPal is one such solution provider. Am informed  Paypal's operations in the Kenyan space has been limited to only "recieve-money" from Kenya but never "pay-out money" to Kenya.  From their recent financial risk-profile review, they have downgraded Kenya nd now stopped BOTH recieve and pay operations.

Ofcourse other payment solution providers continue operations - however, this is not a good sign.  It is similar to those travel-advisories.  If you get one against you from US, sooner rather than later, you will recieve another one from UK and subsequently EU...(you get the drift)

So Liko and other eCommerce operators, plse dont wait untill everyone has flagged down Kenya before you do something about it.

walu.
btw: my earlier speculations on the reasons behind this turn of events seems to be quite close to the mark.
--- On Wed, 2/8/12, Agosta Liko <agostal at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Agosta Liko <agostal at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Kenya Blacklisted?- Paypal, Credit Cards
To: "Walubengo J" <jwalu at yahoo.com>
Cc: "KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions" <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Date: Wednesday, February 8, 2012, 11:58 AM

Walu

Please check with Isaca for the reason. ePayment providers usually will make decisions to not cover some areas or clients ... This does not mean that Kenya has been blacklisted.

I have made calls and all local processors are processing cards ok

You can test out your card (Visa/Mastercard) here

http://www.nairobimarathon.com/ - donate 500 to Seeing is Believing
http://rupu.co.ke/ and buy one of those daily deals. They have killer discounts

http://umba.co.ke/ --- has good quality household stuff

Also, I would not mind an inbox of management at Isaca Kenya ... We can process for them payments :)

Thanks

On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 9:27 AM, Walubengo J <jwalu at yahoo.com> wrote:

Yeah,

I do have a similar notice from www.isaca.org - Liko, these are serious Info-Security guys and I cant shoot them ;-)  They have suspended online renewals from members of  the local Kenyan Chapter www.isaca.or.ke (because the Kenyan digital space has  recently been flagged as "Not Supported" by their ePayment provider)

I believe the blacklisting is really grey-lisiting i.e. blacklisting by highly sensitive e_payment providers.  But I think someone in government and private sector  needs to escalate this before we get a blanket blacklisting from the international community.

My wild guess(no evidence yet)  is that maybe the war in somalia (is stimulating al-shabaab e-Transactions), piracy returns in the horn of africa and the hugely succefull MPESA e-Transactions could be regarded as being used by similar
 elements and therefore conspiring towards having us on the international watch-list as far as epayments is concerned.

walu.

--- On Tue, 2/7/12, Anderson Levi <anderson.levi at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Anderson Levi <anderson.levi at gmail.com>

Subject: Re: [kictanet] Kenya Blacklisted?- Paypal, Credit Cards
To: jwalu at yahoo.com
Cc: "KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions" <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>

Date: Tuesday, February 7, 2012, 3:55 PM

On a related note here's an email I received late last year from Borderlinx, which provides local addresses in USA & UK for those who are buying products from companies that don't ship internationally. I never experienced any cases of fraud so I was quite surprised that it had reached a level whereby they ceased offering their service to Kenya.

You are receiving this email because you subscribed via Borderlinx.

  If you can't read this mail please  
  click here

	Cessation Of Cross-border Delivery Service To Kenya

Dear Anderson,

After several months of investigation and attempting to reduce the 
incidence of fraud, we have found ourselves in the unfortunate position 
of having to cease providing cross-border delivery services to Kenya 
with immediate effect.  We have considered a number of options to avoid 
this action, but the incidence and risk of fraud for Kenyan transactions
 is too great for our business to absorb.

Regrettably, we will be closing the accounts of all Kenya customers.  If
 you have any packages which are still in one of our export facilities, 
please give us your instructions to release the shipments no later than 
Friday, 16 December 2011.

For those customers who have used our services for legal and honest 
purposes, we are truly sorry that we have been forced to take this 
difficult decision.  If you have any questions, please contact our live 
chat service via the website.

Yours sincerely

The Borderlinx Team

	Visit www.borderlinx.com

If you do not wish to receive future e-mails from Borderlinx, please click here

Please do not reply to this e-mail, if you wish to contact us, click here

On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 3:19 PM, robert yawe <robertyawe at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

Hi,
The local authentication has been active for over 2 years now, the SMS thing is what the USA is now trying to implement after seeing the success of Safaricom.

I believe the issue of rejected transactions has to do with cards issued by certain banks.
Regards Robert Yawe
KAY System Technologies Ltd
Phoenix House, 6th Floor
P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200
Kenya

Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696

     From: James Mbugua <jgmbugua at gmail.com>

 To: robertyawe at yahoo.co.uk 

Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> 
 Sent: Tuesday, 7 February 2012, 15:06

 Subject: Re: [kictanet] Kenya Blacklisted?- Paypal, Credit Cards

There is talk now of introducing locally, owner authentification through mobile so that if your card is swiped or used, before the
 transaction goes through, you get an SMS asking you to authorize the transaction.

Not sure where the initiative is currently.
JG
On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 2:51 PM, lordmwesh <lordmwesh at gmail.com> wrote:

Just bought a book Yesterday from amazon,and they had no issue.

But I gather that international companies don't value the African market so much since the sales revenue are too low, yet risk of business through fraud  is high. Credit card fraud is rampant in Africa and it's hard to apprehend the suspects. The legal and geographic boundaries make it hard to apprehend crooks.

Ideally, If anybody lays hands on your CC or debit card, they can do online shopping with it. And card cloning and identity theft is rampant in Africa because most of us don't know the consequences.  If the owner complains of the theft and purchase, he is entitled to a cash refund. So someone has to cushion the losses.

Often we let petrol station  and supermarket attendants dissapear with out CC. Do we know what they are doing with it?

Regards

On 7 February 2012 13:26, Walubengo J <jwalu at yahoo.com> wrote:

Liko, others,

Might you be in the know on the above issues?  Just got wind that that international players are no longer respecting e-Transactions completed in kenya via Credit Cards issued and used in Kenyan digital space?

What may have triggered such an eventuality?

walu.

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