Author: Adedeji Olowe

Adedeji / a bunch of bananas ate a monkey /

Poor Support and Initiatives from Payment Gateway Providers Kills ECommerce in Nigeria

My experiments with Magento and OpenCart revealed a lack of modules for Nigerian payment gateways, hindering e-commerce growth. Providers should offer plugins for popular platforms and improve support to boost online shopping.

In my recent online payment experiments, I worked with both Magento and OpenCart. While Magento is complex enough to make even a bishop go raving mad, it still came with some payment modules/plugins out of the box. Same for OpenCart. Conspicuously missing are the modules from top payment gateways in Nigeria.

From my own firsthand experience, handcrafting APIs for payment is a bore. It has significantly retarded the growth of ecommerce in Nigeria more than anything else.

If you want to accept payment online in Nigeria today, you are limited to payment gateways from:

  • InterSwitch and/or UPSL (ValuCard)
  • Banks and their proprietary systems
  • Other independent providers such as Pay4Me, etc.

Thereafter you are on your own. One, you don’t have any pre-cooked modules or plugins you can easily install on the most common payment applications such as OpenCart, Magento, PrestaShop, ZenCart, etc. and also their integration documentations are lame, non-existent or sometimes downright incorrect. Support is patchy and poor, and they want to charge you for every time you take a breath.

So how can life be easier? Payment gateway providers should make available modules or plugins that can be used for probably the 10 commonest online engines, including the venerable old WordPress and Joomla (yes, some people do use such). Also, they should have a vibrant support system such as an online forum – with sample codes, reviews, user interactions, blah blah blah.
This should create a network effect; as more shops go online, much more will like to go online. Ultimately anyone with a card will always have something to buy online.

Online Payment Sucks

Despite the government’s push for a cashless society, major retailers like DSTV and telcos lack integrated payment options. Swift Wireless excels, showing the need for smarter solutions from industry leaders.

Why isn’t the cashlite breeze blowing over to some of the major retail forces in the industry? I mean the government has stoked the cashless fire but I don’t know if guys over at DSTV are wearing fire-retardant pants or what not.

Ok. This is a gripe but then someone’s got to listen to me.
The other day I wanted to pay for my cable TV and still had to do it over QuickTeller. Given, those dudes have done some job, though it feels pre-historic at times but the gripe is why I have to go over to QuickTeller when I should be able to pay for this right inside my DSTV account? Why hasn’t DSTV integrated payment into their own website and make the customer experience sticky? Maybe this is a jamb question, which I would never know. Last I checked, I did mine eons ago.

Same for MTN and the other clueless telcos, you can’t buy airtime on their websites. They don’t have any mobile app. You can’t type in your card number and get some chatty airtime added as extra-life to your phone to harass some poor souls at the other end of the virtual wire.

Reality is sometimes big society change will only happen when some prime movers get moving. Time CBN and the big ole’ banks work on initiatives that can make impact on the market.

Sorry I forgot, someone got it right. Swift Wireless. Even when your internet subscription is up in flames and you can’t see any cat videos or lulz on the web, the payment gateways still work. Someone apparently thinks in that place but it seems they patented intelligence and MTN and folks wouldn’t pay licensing fee.

Saddest story ever

Akpos and his two friends went to China for vacation. Since they were new at the place, they had to stay in a hotel. They ended up being on the 60th floor. The policy of the hotel was that, at midnight, the elevator is shut down.

The next day, they rented a car and explored the city. They enjoyed themselves and arrived at the hotel pass midnight. The elevators had been shut down. There was no other way to get to their room than to take the stairs all the way to the 60th floor.

The first friend said, for the first 20 floors, I will tell jokes to keep us going. Pointing to the second friend) you’ll say wise stories for the next 20 floors, and (pointing to Akpos) you will cover the final 20 floors with sad stories.

They started telling jokes. With lots of laugh and joy, they reached the 20th floor.

The second friend started telling stories full of wisdom. They had learnt a lot on reaching the 40th floor.

Now it was time for sad stories. Akpos said; my first sad story is that I forgot the key to the room in the car.

Posted while on the move

Rain Guage

Akpos’ fiancee invited him over for dinner in her house, so that he could meet her parents.
While they were eating, it started raining heavily. The girl’s mother said: “Akpos, I think you should sleep over here because this rain shows no sign of stopping anytime soon”

After eating, the mom went to the toilet and the father went to sleep while the girl went to the kitchen to clean the plates, when the girl and the mother returned, Akpos was no longer there.
As they were busy wondering where he was, he came back really soaking wet.

Mother: “Where were you and why are you so wet?”

Akpos: “I went home to get my pyjamas”

Posted while on the move

Mixing Omo with Klin

Akpor asks teacher: Excuse me ma, if you mix Omo and Klin, will there be foam?

Teacher responds: Yes of course, why ask such a stupid question at the beginning of the year, are you going to pass this class at all?

Akpor laughs and whisper to the other kids, such a dumb teacher, how can you get foam without adding water, are we going to know anything at all with dis teacher?

Posted while on the move