Our PayPal Woes Are Over – PayFast Is Online Payment Processing For South Africa
The highlight of Bloggerati Jo’burg (thanks to Matt and Vincent for hosting it) last night was meeting Andy Higgins, founder of BidorBuy – Africa’s largest online auction site.
For an entrepreneur as successful and well-established as Andy is, he was completely unassuming. In fact I wouldn’t have known who he was at all had he not introduced himself to me, saying that he followed this blog and some of the work being done on Cerebra and Afrigator. How ironic!
We chatted a bit about our respective interests and some of the projects we’re working on, when Andy dropped a veritable bomb (in a completely unassuming way) with a mention that he’s just funded the development of PayFast – a secure, online payment processing site for South Africa. Quite simply, PayFast makes it “safe for buyers to send money and easy for sellers to receive money” online.
Finally!
PayFast lists the benefits for buyers and merchants (bearing in mind that you don’t have to be a massive retailer to be a merchant – I could be a merchant, provided I’m selling something):
For Buyers
* Shop Online without disclosing your financial information
* Pay using EFT with the ease and speed of a Credit Card
* Shop with confidence online
For Sellers
* No monthly fees! Only per transaction fees
* Accept EFT payments with the ease & speed of credit cards
* No manual reconciliation required to accept EFT payments
* Reduced fraud through effective use of technology
This is fantastic news for all of us, and hopefully will signal a whole new generation of online start-ups and useful services. All credit to Andy and his team – by his own admission this is the project he is most passionate about right now, and I can see why.