Young Ethiopian developers call their innovation Yenepay. It’s the first of its kind in Ethiopia and once rolled out it will link customers to service providers through their phones and computers only.
“Cash on delivery is the most trusted and well tested way of transactions and we are trying to break into that market and bring in a new innovative idea s that people can easily do these transactions. Remote payment makes the buyer committed to that transaction and it avoids returns and other disputes so we are trying to move into that space and secure these types of transactions” said Ermais Haileyesus, Co-Founder, Yenepay
Businesses have to register to get a Yenepay account where they can get all the necessary plugins to connect consumers to their products. The consumer also has register to see what products and services can be bought through Yenepay.
“It of course mainly depends on internet but we also use USSD , text and other non-internet means so we kind of back up but of course if there is no internet we would suffer .” said Natan Tadesse Co-Founder Yenepay
Internet penetration in the country is still low, standing at about only 5 million people. And as such the developers want to concentrate on users between 18 and 45 years who already understand E -commerce.
The Yenepay cofounds hope they’ll see 60 million transactions and generate a revenue of 50 million dollars in just five years. They hope sellers of goods and financial institutions looking to reach the 80% of Ethiopians who don’t have bank accounts will be keen to register.
“The E commerce market is almost non existent in Ethiopia . People don’t use internet for the commercial purposes, So we as technology guys really suffer from that we cant capitalize from the Ethiopian Internet as we are currently. so Yenepay is one of the Key factor in this are to open up technology society to use internet to do business.” said SISAY GETNET CO-FOUNDER, YENEPAY
In order for Yenepay to make money off its software, it will charge businesses a transaction fee of up to three percent on sales made through the app.
