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Online transactions in Africa are on a steady rise thanks to great infrastructure emerging technology and up-to-date resources. However, there is still a minimal number of African developers and online merchants that have decided monetized their apps or websites. Peach Payments, a South Africa and Berlin based company has seen the need to address this by providing an electronic payment solution to help developers and merchants monetize digital audiences who are looking for real-world products and services on the different interfaces including web, mobile browser and native in-app payments. Peach Payments has partnered with a number of merchants in the region and is set to launch these projects by the end of the year.

Afriapps got a chance to talk to the founders of Peach Payments and this is what they had to say.

Give us a brief history on Peach payments.
Peach Payments was setup in Jan 2012 as one of the original Google Umbono incubated companies in Cape Town, South Africa. We are a niche carve-out from an existing payments company Omba Gmbh. Peach Payments is a full service online and mobile payments service provider with a focus on expanding our coverage in the emerging markets of Africa, and India.

Currently we are operational in South Africa and have been processing live customer transactions here since June 2012. We also have existing coverage in Europe, North America and Brazil.

How does it work?
We operate based on a state-of-the-art transaction platform which allows us to offer our merchants access to the most relevant payment methods in our target countries. Our merchants are able to accept payments using cards, bank transfers, mobile and electronic wallets on their website and mobile app.

We offer simple API and SDK kits making it easier for developers to integrate our solution into their websites and mobile apps allowing them to easily and securely accept payments from multiple channels.

Our web and mobile app integration technology allows our merchants to greatly simplify their PCI compliance process by preventing any sensitive cardholder data from passing through the merchant’s systems.

What platforms can it work on?
For the mobile in-app payments, we currently offer SDKs for iOS and Android. We are working on a Windows Phone 8 solution which will be released soon. We are evaluating options for a Blackberry (legacy) solution; however our Android SDK should work with the new Blackberry OS10 apps.

What are its benefits to the user and Developer?
The main benefit we offer to the developer is the easy integration options while bringing powerful risk management and fraud prevention solutions to their payment processes.

Through the same integration we can also provide the developers with access to payment systems in multiple countries. Features such as Single-Click payments and Subscription and Recurring billing are also available to merchants for both the web and mobile interfaces.

By offering a native in-app payment solution we enable developers to greatly improve the user experience in the apps (since there is not visible redirect for the user) and this also positively impacts the users themselves.

What made you decide to put your focus on Africa?
Africa offers a huge growth opportunity for developers and merchants looking to sell products and services through online and mobile platforms. When we researched the markets we also found that there is a lack of advanced payment platforms in hence creating an opportunity for Peach Payments to help developers and merchants monetize consumers while being able to differentiate ourselves.

Our aim is to provide developers and merchants with leading-edge solutions so that we can contribute to the growth of the e-commerce and m-commerce ecosystems in our home markets.

How has the reception in Africa been so far?
Reception has been great. Both developers and merchants greatly appreciate our products and have also provided excellent feedback to help us improve. We are only limited by the speed at which we are able to expand to more countries in Africa.

What would you say is the unique factor or feature of your product compared to other companies that provide the same services?
Peach Payments is able to provide a solution that is not only developer-friendly with our API and SDKs but also merchant-friendly from a business perspective. We offer a highly scalable solution that meets the needs of the fast growing online and mobile business. As we continue to expand our coverage in Africa, we would be able to offer merchants’ access to local payment methods in all these countries through a single technical integration.

We also provide merchants with access to an advanced and intuitive Business Intelligence Portal (BIP) where they can view, refund and reverse all their transactions across both web and mobile platforms. The BIP also provides merchants with payments analytics tools helping them easily analyze their sales performance.

Do you have any plans to also integrate the mobile money payment services that are quite popular in a number of African countries?
Absolutely. Mobile money payments services are core to our strategy in Africa. We will always look for the payment systems that consumers are using (such as mPesa in Kenya) and will integrate them to make them available to our merchants.

What are your future plans?
Our plans for this year include expanding into Kenya, Nigeria in Africa and India in Asia.

Over the next few years we want to establish ourselves as the preferred payments partner for online and mobile businesses targeting Africa and the other emerging markets.

Interested in knowing more about Peach Payments? Check out their website.

Images courtesy of Peach Payments.

Not African! But damn inspiring. Get it here.

This was one of the team's project at the just concluded British Council Culture Shift II which I had the honour of being a mentor. The Paukwa team undertook a challenge proposed by Kwani Trust to find a way to reach a wider and more diverse audience via alternative digital media.

UNDP and UNODC want to engage youth across the world, through an open competition, to choose 2013's International Anti-Corruption Day campaign theme and logo.

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Full details here.