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Month Of Electronic Payments: eTranzact Ghana

Posted on 06. May, 2010 by Nana Kwabena Owusu in Biz + Tech, Real Tech

eTranzact Ghana Limited is currently one of the leading providers of electronic payment solutions in Ghana, leveraging the experience of its parent company in Nigeria, eTranzact International. eTranzact International is a wholly owned Nigerian company that operates in several countries including Ghana, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Cote D’Ivoire and UK (and also possibly USA and South Africa, but that is not stated on their corporate website).

From the website of eTranzact Ghana,

E-tranzact Ghana Limited is a provider of real-time payment system that allows individuals and corporate account holders to pay for goods and services from merchants without stress.

E-tranzact actually uses the phrase  ‘first real-time payment system’ but I believe that Visa will have a thing or two to say about that.

E-Tranzact offers products and services to both consumers and corporate entities across several industries which can be classified under four main categories; Mobile Topup; Mobile Banking, Bill Payment and Online Purchases, with funds being received through three channels, partner banks, mobile phones or over the internet.

Their solutions include;

eTranzact PayOutlet

eTranzact Payoutlet is a solution designed to allow Merchants collect payments from its customers through the branches of eTranzact member banks.

This solution shows the insight and advanatage a local venodr has in providing solutions which satisfy actual needs of a segment of businesses in Ghana. It provides a bridge between electronic payments (which is still not widely adopted or trusted by consumers) and manual payments by increasing the number of payment outlets (using a familiar channel, banks) and realtime payments verification and notifications for Ghanaian merchants.

eTranzact mCommerce Services

This service allows cardholders to do mobile topups, mobile banking, pay bills and also buy online using the most ubiquitous technology in Ghana, your mobile phone. The service requires downloading a Java (J2ME) app onto your mobile phone which may or may not restrict adoption. Presently most people getting these cards are early adopters and corporate workers who are likely to be comfortable with downloading java apps onto their phones but my gut says it may be a restriction for mass adoption.

It is however interesting to note that there are facts which indicate otherwise. The last State of the Mobile Web report from Opera Software which focused on Africa, November 2009, showed that a significant number of Ghanaians use Opera Mini, which is also a java app and has to be downloaded.

In this month’s report [November 2009], we looked at countries in Africa. The top 10 countries using Opera Mini in Africa are: South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Libya, Ivory Coast, Zambia, Tanzania, and Namibia.

Since our last spotlight on Africa, Kenya jumped from #4 to #3, Ghana jumped from #11 to #5, and Ivory Coast jumped from #8 to #7.

If you are interested in the full report then read it here.

If you are already an eTranzact customer and have not downloaded the app, Download the one for your phone model and read the SMS Syntax guide.

Note: All the new poster children smartphones, BlackBerry, iPhone and Android do not have platform specific apps listed but BlackBerry being a Java based OS platform might probably run one of the listed apps.

eTranzact eCommerce Services

This service from eTranzact is the one that interests me the most personally because it provides a platform which integrates online payments into any partner merchants website and is in effect a shopping cart solution. According to the service page, it integrates directly with your backend and offers the option to specify delivery addresses and also connects to your order processing and shipping departments.

Here are the requirements for getting this integrated into your website.

• An eTranzact Merchant Account with any of the participating banks
• A functional e-commerce website to show case your products and/or services
• Integration of the eTranzact API (Application Programming Interface) payment engine into your website for the purpose of online payment.

There are two points of interest with the e-commerce services;

Delivery Addresses: The delivery address functionality is one of the areas which if done well could be a fantastic differentiating feature for eTranzact ( I really want to see it in action) especially if integrated with third party maps like Google Maps or Bing Maps. There are lots of little features they could use to keep merchants happy with their platform, for example, automatically generated driving directions for each order, ready to print!

eTranzact API

I believe this is another forward thinking (almost revolutionary in Ghana) feature which provides maximum flexibility in utilizing eTranzact’s ecommerce service. I must state that the API is not that in depth yet, but its a good start. The API also brings up an interesting rebuttal to my smartphone issue because any developer can make a fantastic iPhone, BlackBerry or Android app and leverage the underlying payment platform.

Question: Is there any other Ghanaian company apart from eTranzact with a public API? Provide answers in the comments, please.

Access to the eCommerce payment gateway, that is access to use the eTranzact API for live transactions, currently costs GHC 1050.00 but eTranzact seems to be flexible with the terms of signing on to their platform.

eTranzact B2B Services

This service facilitates business to business electronic transactions with custom business rules for Ordering, Payment for goods (distributors), Suppliers’ payment, Credit facilities to distributors, Stock management, Corporate Payment (Salary and Pension Payment and Administration, etc).

Some of the B2B features are really innovative and would greatly increase productivity. For example the B2B service has a feature for customer categorization which allows a business to define products and services a customer can purchase and their credit level, if the business has credit facilities.

This in turn then uses the automated ordering and purchasing module to allow customers to make purchases within their product or service and credit categories,  and require cash payments for orders in excess of credit limits. It even automatically debits and credits both the customer (debtor) and business (creditor) when credit repayment is due.

eTranzact also offers other services like: eTranzact WebAcess which provides single sign on (SSO) integrated account management for all linked bank accounts including transferring funds to other account holders; Telco services which allow mobile topups, postpaid GSM account payments.

Read all about their products and solutions on from their website.

Related posts:

1. The Month of Electronic Payments (Updated)
2. Month of Electronic Payments: TxtNpay
3. Month of Electronic Payments: MTN MobileMoney
4. Month of Electronic Payments: Zap by Zain

Tags: bill payment, credit cards, debit cards, e-commerce, electronic payments, etranzact, Ghana, m-commerce, mobile, payment solutions