Tech

PesaPal distributes its Sabi POS to about 2000 merchants across East Africa

Published

4 years ago

November 28, 2018

PesaPal’s Sabi mobile point of sale (m-POS) has so far been distributed to over 1500 merchants across East Africa, with a lot of uptake coming from tour operators and the travel industry as well as schools and small retailers. The firm is hopeful that the festive season will even see the uptake more than triple.

According to the firm, most merchants are happy with the product and find the terminal’s small build convenient for use and better than any other POS systems in the market. Customers are also enthusiastic about Sabi POS because set up is fast and easy.

“As an aggregator, we work to provide our merchants and customers with as many payment options as possible so their launch provides us the opportunity to add to our offering,” said Wamuyu Kiragu, PesaPal’s Marketing Manager adding that the firm has been teaching merchants to understand how a non-traditional POS solution works to make the onboarding process easy as its offering a financial solution that has long been offered by large banks.

Another challenge PesaPal has faced is access to well priced Smartphones & Tablets to pair with the terminal but the firm is working to find a partner who can supply the devices at a reasonable price. Sabi POS plans to integrate T-Kash because its an interesting opportunity to Sabi POS users to have as many payment methods as possible.

Sabi POS allows merchants in East Africa to accept card payments. Set up is simple as all one needs to do is get the terminal at around Ksh.8K for their shop, then download the Sabi Android App, create an account and start accepting payments. To accept payments, one inserts their customer card, adds amount to be paid then allows the customer to put in their PIN number, the Sabi completes the transaction.
Though Sabi POS is aimed at helping SMEs accept card payments, anyone can use it to power their businesses including top corporates with mobile branches as Sabi POS is mobile and allows them that flexibility of both field and office operations. Sabi POS is doing so well in Tanzania since the market there was undeserved. In Kenya, the bulk of Sabi POS users are retail shop owners as well as Travel agents. Sabi POS main competition is cash and banks who are trying to simplify their terminals too.
So far, Pesapal has partnered with Visa to Include Visa or mvisa on mobile as Pesapal payment option to boost financial inclusions. The firm has also launched Duka Manager to collect data about the business, the owners of the businesses then use the data to apply for loans from financial institutions. Sabi also does data collection but its major focus now is to allow the business to accept payments. Being NFC and Bluetooth-powered

Sabi

Sabi POS initially thought Safaricom’s MPESA 1Tap would be its killer, but several months down after launch, MPESA 1Tap has died a peaceful dead and Safaricom went back to upgrade its Lipa na MPESA paybills or till numbers for faster speeds. But the speeds are slow and the privacy poor compared to cards. PesaPal Sabi users can also use either Bluetooth or NFC, thereby making it as mobile as possible as the Sabi POS terminal is lighter than most phones and portable and can handle up to 250 transactions on a single battery charge.