My personal opinion is that expressPay is one of the best eCommerce marketplace and a payment gateway provider Ghana has. Since its inception, this company has maintained the simplicity of getting complex financial online transactions done within seconds.
My first experience with expressPay was paying for my Surfline internet bundle, and I didn’t even need to have an account with them. All that was needed was my credit card details, and bingo details of the transaction were sent to me via the email assigned to my Surfline account.
It was that express!
They finally upgraded and introduced a mobile app, and customers now had to create user accounts on their platform which was fine by me. A good way to have all your transactions neatly tracked and managed under one account.
With their app, I didn’t need to repeat some numbers or account details, the previous transaction gives the option to save, and use later. This is a good feature, especially when you will keep performing a transaction to a specific account(s) on a number of occasions.
expressPay has been my no.1 mobile payment app if I am not using *170# (MTN MoMo)Â or that of my bank’s.
What I am about to share cuts across all Telecom service providers and not only MTN. I chose to use MTN because that is the network I use.
A recent development I see may not be too good for this indigenous company; for users who opt to pay for their transaction with MTN MoMo, the process has changed, and I personally don’t think it is fair because it just makes the process cumbersome and people may prefer to use MTN MoMo for the same transaction directly.
Before now, paying for a service with expressPay was that simple. Once you select MTN MoMo as your payment option, you get a prompt on your screen, enter your MTN MoMo PIN, and accept the transaction on a second screen prompt by entering the number 1.
Now, things are different, and I am disgusted about it!
conversely, If you opt for MTN MoMo as your payment option, instead of the usual prompt to enter your MTN MoMo Pin, you are greeted with the screen prompt asking you to dial *170#, choose option 10 which is now 7 for (Wallet), then select option 3 (My Approvals). Next, enter PIN, select expressPay, and choose option 1 to approve.
Screenshot of expressPay’s review and pay page with MTN MoMo selected as a payment option.
Screenshot of expressPay’s review and pay page with the new prompt for MTN MoMo
Who would want to go through all this?
I know many people will opt to get their transactions done directly with MTN MoMo than have to go through a 3rd-party like expressPay, and still be asked to dial *170# to complete payment.
This move will discourage a lot of people from using the services of these Fintech startups especially the ones being provided by the Telcos such as buying airtime, internet data, etc. I may not be too such the motive behind these sudden changes from the Telcos but this is quite unfair to these Fintech companies.
“Already people aren’t too hooked to using these 3rd-party services and switching things up anyhow like this will discourage people like me from recommending these FinTech services to others.” – Enam Kumi, Accraconnect.com.
I kindly plead that something is done about this. We need to see more successful startups in Ghana.
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The post Is the Telcos in Ghana subtly breaking expressPay and other Fintech startups? appeared first on JBKlutse.
