Paygital Gateway Services

The problem of  informal workers who have limited access to financial services, we make access to their funds easy, fast and affordable for them through cheap transaction charge and agency banking, as well as processing payments of those businesses who cant afford to rent a shop but take to social media platforms the luxury of accessing cheap and readily available financial service within social media landscape

 The Mission Billion Challenge WURI West Africa Prize seeks sustainable, tech-based solutions that facilitate portable contributions to social insurance programs, such as pensions and savings accounts, by informal sector workers in West Africa and as a payment gateway, Paygital gateway service is using its technology to help the vast informal sector workers to save their funds by deducting the money directly from their bank accounts both online and offline and this will make it convenient for them. 

The informal sector in West Africa is a primary driver of economic activity. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 89 percent of employed women and girls are in the informal sector workforce, which accounts for 80 percent of total employment and 55 percent of total GDP and this informal sector workers are our target population. Using our financial inclusion strategy, we are able to understand their needs and how our technology can help improve their lives by making it easier for them to save their income regardless of where they are at any particular time and in so doing saving for insurance, pension and fight in cases where financial crisis arise as the irregular and low earnings of informal workers leave them particularly vulnerable to economic shocks. 

The informal sector in West Africa is a primary driver of economic activity. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 89 percent of employed women and girls are in the informal sector workforce. Using our financial inclusion strategy, we are able to understand their needs and how our technology can help improve their lives by making it easier for them to save their income regardless of where they are at any time and in so doing saving for insurance, pension and fight in cases where financial crisis arise as the irregular and low earnings of informal workers leave them particularly vulnerable to economic shocks. 

The payment gateway technology is a know system worldwide and it has found its roots in the African market. There are prominent known names in the financial technology ecosystem with names such as Paystack, Flutterwave, Remitta amongst others.

Our major competitors in the market are Paystack and Flutterwave who are basically a B2B payment system, what makes your solution different are as follows;

1. AFFORDABILITY

Paygital Gateway Services has the lowest charge per transaction in the Payment gateway service ecosystem in west Africa. we try to make very affordable for the common man in the society and more conveniently.

2. KEYBOARD INTEGRATION FOR DEVICES

Paygital has been able to create it's own keyboard and infuse its system into the keyboard so that anyone who installs Paygital keyboard can easily make transactions from the comfort of their devices without the hassle of going to login into the website. This enables the informal sector workers to easily make payments into their long-term savings account or pension accounts without needing to visit the physical bank location.

3. B2B2C SYSTEM

Our competitors are basically focused on business-to-business but Paygital gateway services seeks to include the informal sector workers in the mix so as to help them improve their business, worker and grass-root development using its plaform to help them create online stores to sell their goods, accept payments for those who sell on their social media accounts such as Facebook, twitter,etc.

Paygital gateway Services is a solution that utilizes a widely used and accepted technology with companies like Uber, Bolt, Bet9ja, and other known names having integrated to the APIs.The best way to process online and offline business transaction. Paygital offers swift and secured payment solutions. 

Paygital offers secured and easy way of processing online and offline payments using the following channels

• Card
• Bank Account
• POS
• USSD
• Wallets

our merchants are required to log onto our web platform and register to have access to this technology, they can also download our mobile App for ease of use. The informal sector workers can log onto our web platform, create an account and link it to their bank account indicating the amount of money that should be deducted from their bank account or long-term savings account or pension account and at what interval it should be deducted from their account. This way we will be able to help them save without feeling it and they have access to their funds depending on the terms of their saving with commercial bank.

They can also use ussd code to make transfers into their Pension account as well as create digital wallets that help them save their money securely and conveniently.

Our theory of change circles around the ability of the informal sector workers to be able to save money consistently in their pension accounts, long-term savings account or insurance account to enable them escape economic shocks, including the COVID-19 pandemic, locust epidemics, or displacement.

Our solution will provide the informal sector workers  population of West Africa an opportunity to save in their pension and long-term accounts as well as their insurance account easily. By creating account on our platform, the informal sector workers stand to benefit from the ease of transaction and a digital wallet free of charge. some workers don't have the luxury of going to the bank everyday to deposit money in their long-term savings accounts or Insurance account.

By letting them know the benefits that come with leveraging on our technology, we will be able to reach the greater population of the general public to accept this technology.

In the long run, the informal sector workers will be able to raise sufficient funds for long term projects and investments in the future.

Our business model provides entrepreneur support by providing business and tech support to the informal sector workers in West Africa.

Our organisational structure consists of different teams that carry out specific and objective roles to achieve the vision of our solution.

We have the technical team, accounting team, customer service team and marketing team. We work alongside external partners in the fintech industry to meet the needs of our target market.

Our resource strategy is acquired from efforts put together by team members to accomplish various tasks, while finances are acquired from partners and investors.

We also subsidise our services by selling our services to social and non-profit organisations to help fund social programs. In this case, these organisations will carry out their business activities as well as social programs that provide organisational support such as consulting, counselling, trainings, exhibitions e.t.c.

Our solution very user friendly and we have created APIs in various programming languages to help organisation, persons and business owners integrate easily. Web APIs that can help incorporate into social protection programs and delivery systems in west Africa are readily available upon request.

1. Mobile Compatibility

As more and more people use their mobile phones to access the Internet, creating a mobile optimized website has become a necessity and we have been able to create such scalable website.

2. Accessible to All Users

A user-friendly website should also be accessible to everyone including blind, disabled or the elderly and paygital has been able to incooperate these into our platform.

3. Well-Formatted Content That Is Easy to Scan

The average Internet user skims through the content on a web page instead of reading each and every word from top to down. Users tend to scan through key parts of the page quickly to determine if it is relevant to their needs. our website is well formatted to suit these needs.

4. Fast Load Times

Nothing is more annoying for website visitors than a website that takes long to load. In fact, slow speed is one of the main reasons why visitors leave a website. We Make sure our website loads within 4 to 6 seconds which is important for good usability.

5. Effective Navigation

Our web platform has a good navigation which is one of the most important aspects of website usability.

Our solution is an open API  which is easily interoperable with existing technologies and open standard. Our open APIs are written in various programming languages that any existing technology can easily integrate and scalability is vast and great.

We understand that the West Africa is a developing continent and the issue of low connectivity is high in most rural area and we also understand that our target population are not just people in the city but also people that are in area with low connectivity.

We developed a platform that supports offline transaction whereby those in the areas with low network connectivity can also perform any form of transaction they wish to do.

We also make it convenient for people with low literacy and numeracy level to scale through our platform as after the first creation of their account on the platform, they have less work to do as the platform can take funds from accounts on the agreed amount of deduction and the interval chosen.

Using a simple USSD code, people with low numeracy has access to whatever transaction they wish to perform as well.

we currently serve total population of 700 clients who are active users and are comfortable with our services. As a startup we are making advertisement to potential customers and in the next one year, we project to be serving an approximate population of 5 million clients.

West Africa has a vast population that are unbanked, many who are of low numeracy and with help of our unwavering and tenacious team, we anticipate to reach a population of clients between the range of 48-50 million.

As the majority of the west Africa population are under the informal sector workers as much as 89%, we have create a system that help these informal sector workers in their businesses and work in the following ways which help impact their lives positively.

Availability And Affordability

Paygital gateway services knows the needs of the informal sector workers, some of them who don't have money to rent shop or create a website and we have been able to create a platform that can help them create online presence and sell their goods on the platform.  In the next one year, Leveraging on our platform, the informal sector workers will be massively impacted as more businesses will grow thereby creating wealth and it will also help in creating more jobs.

Mobile technologies have enabled financial service providers to create an environment where funds can be moved freely to anyone who owns a mobile device and expand their reach to rural and remote areas and in the next five years, paygital gateway service is looking at creating an environment where the informal sector workers become sensitive to needs to save their funds, create businesses and jobs in a growing continent. By using Paygital, the benefits of bringing banking services to the under served population to both urban and rural areas and help them save more as they will tend to save if there their money is deducted automatically.

Paygital Gateway Service as a startup has its barriers to accomplishing our goals in the next year and in the next five years which includes the following

1. CBN Fintech  Policy 

Central Bank Of Nigeria has placed a significant barrier to innovation as it is only those with Much money that can apply for License to operate and as a result, we have to partner with another Fintech company to leverage on their license to process payment. This has limit our income generally as we have to share the income with the partnering company. As a payment gateway service, access to funding will enable us to acquire our own license and maximize profit.

2. Funds for marketing and advertisement 

As a growing business, we need funds to do marketing campaign so as to reach out potential customers and f we have access to funds, we will be able to cover the whole of west Africa within the next five years and our presence will reach those who needs our services

3. Staff-overhead 

As a financial organisation, we need the very best hands in building our software and in so doing, we need to funds to be able to hire the very best in the industry .

4. Language and cultural barrriers

Subcultures and multiple languages can exist within a country, making scaling up for startups a real challenge.

1. Navigating 

We are leveraging on partnerships with other licensed fintech companies which will make it easier for us to operate. This will enable us test new technologies without adhering to all the regulations that govern existing financial institutions until new regulatory frameworks can be incorporated.

2. Funding for marketing and advertisement.

We will focus on top marketing funnels that are targeted and cost effective. 

3. Staff Overhead

Our staffs/ team members have great talent which is being maximised in the highest capacity. As we scale, more talented individuals will offered employment opportunity, get adequate training needed to accomplish our long term goal and vision of our company.

4. Language and cultural barriers.

Overcoming these barriers requires special attention to our messaging and communication strategies in each market. The use of simple, inclusive and reassuring language to describe our services. This will show that we are real people, and it is establish trust with customers.

Full Staff 10

Part Time Staff 4

Contractors 7

Our team consist of both Technical, Legal and professionals who has vast Knowledge in the financial industry, as well as gifted software engineers who work aggressively to achieve this solution.

Technical Unit

In our Technical unit, we have a group of Software engineers who have background in various programming languages and they are responsible for the overall development and deployment of this solution.

The Legal Unit

In our Legal unit, we boost of a seasoned Barrister who has worked in the legal industry for variably above 10 years and he has been great.

The Management/administrative Unit

 Our Management/administrative Unit unit comprises of a Doctor of Economics who is also a lecturer at De Montfort University in the department of strategic  and management, faculty of business and law, Leicester castle Business school.

We also have a professional banker who has worked in the financial industry for over 15 years.

Etransact, we're leveraging on their PSSP license for online payment processing 

Innovectives, we're leveraging on their PTSP license to process POS/Mobile Money Transactions

Our Business Model is a Payment Gateway

A payment gateway is an e-commerce service that authorizes credit card or direct payments processing for online businesses, bricks and clicks, or traditional brick and mortar sellers. It is essentially the virtual equivalent of the point-of-sale terminals at physical stores.

How Does A Payment Gateway Work?

The basic method by which a payment gateway works is below

1. The process begins when a customer places an order on the website by clicking the “Submit Order” or “Checkout” button.
2. The merchant securely sends the details of that customer’s transaction to the payment gateway. This is commonly done via SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption. The payment gateway then routes the transaction to the issuing bank for authorization.
3. Once the transaction has been authenticated, it is approved or declined (based on the funds available in the customer’s account) by the issuing bank. The payment gateway then conveys this message to the merchant.
4. The bank settles the transaction amount with the payment gateway and the payment gateway settles the amount with the merchant.

How Does A Payment Gateway Make Money?

we can now examine their sources of revenue.

Transaction Discounting Rate (TDR) – Every transaction that is successfully routed through the payment gateway infrastructure is charged with a transaction processing fee known as the Transaction Discounting Rate, or TDR, expressed as a percentage of the transaction value. The TDR differs based on the mode of payment selected by the customer, such as credit/debit card, Internet banking, digital wallets

As a payment gateway, selling products and services every transaction that is successfully routed through the payment gateway infrastructure is charged with a transaction processing fee known as the Transaction Discounting Rate, or TDR, expressed as a percentage of the transaction value. The TDR differs based on the mode of payment selected by the customer, such as credit/debit card, Internet banking, digital wallets such as Paypal, Kudda Bank, ALAT by Wema etc.

Charges on international transactions – Many payment gateways charge a higher TDR for transactions involving multiple currencies.

Businesses that open accounts with payment gateways are charged annual maintenance costs as well as fees for technical support.

We've been solely self-funded, we've been able to generate traction but due to the partnership due to licensing limitations we have to split profits, so far we've the revenue of $5,580

$200,000 grant funding is what we are looking at getting to help our brand grow.

Fixed Costs/Overhead per Annum

Rent = $1400

Utility bills = $370

Phone bills/communication costs = $300

Legal/insurance/licensing fees = $1500

Technology = $2000

Advertising & marketing = $3000

Salaries = $12,000

One of the major challenge Paygital is looking at conquering is to acquire CBN Fintech License to be able to process payments and transactions using our own PSSP license which will help increase revenue and expand our market to other countries in west Africa.