What Is Wrong If African Coders Build An Online Payment System For Africans?

Within the Nigerian domain, I believe there exists a company called Interswitch which, though expensive, is pretty established.  Many companies are using them as well.  There are also others I am sure.  Rather than reinvent the wheel, why not see if you can extend upon what they have already done?

What concerns me is that, given the way Nigeria tends to operate, I wouldn't be surprised that the likes of interswitch have a lock on the banks and as such, those banks may not be willing to entertain your proposal.

Since you are developing something for the entire continent, perhaps the best thing to do would be to start with a small country where the bureaucracy/people are more likely to go with change than with a big country like Nigeria where "the mafia" may have already set up shop.  Who knows?  Based on your popularity with your pilot project, other countries would then sign on and before you know it, your product would be the talk of the town.

I think for a project like this, you need to make your intentions known to a wider audience as Nairaland probably caters to a mostly Nigerian audience.  You never know, there might be other fellow African developers thinking the same thing and who might already be at a stage more advanced than you are now

As always my 2 cents.

The problem with your proposal is the "African" issue. If you are creating one for Nigeria it seems a more feasible concept because it will be solving problems that are uniquely related to Nigeria. The reason why I say this is that not all African countries have problems with international online payment systems . Most of the Southern and Northern Africa countries do not have this problem. They do not need an "African"  payment system.

I quiet agree with you all, but like some one said, interswitch has a lock on the banks already and might be difficult to challenge them even a good company like e-trazact is still on the edge how much less charms which is just coming up. I believe the solution is just to do something entirely different, probably go the mobile way.

Nice idea without the "AFRICAN" concept in it. I agree with you we need to start developing our own things but a project like this does not rely on your coding prowress to succeed. It requires lots of protocols and beuracracies. It requires trust, since its a group of people coming together and not a company, then security becomes an issue. Government policies is also a major factor. While the government would be happy at the project, would the banks or merchants involved be? Interswitch is a consortium of Banks-----meaning the database connection strings to each bank's database is trusted with a company - interswitch. It costs them less and of course they feel secured.

However, if you say we should develop a universal banking system for our banks would be a veru nice idea. That i know they pay through their nose and i'm sure they would be glad to have a cheaper and very reliable application. I have always been thinking in this direction sha.

All the same, nice idea and nice to know your mental thought process is awakened for development. Keep thinking like this!!!

me too!!!

I've been working on a payment gateway for about 5months now. BUt existing systems like Interswitch don't want it around. If you can send me a pm I will send you the url of the website. I can post it to the public now as it is in its beta status. majormediainc @ gmail.com to get full brief.