Merchant and QR Payment Platforms

Why acceptance spread without a terminal

A card terminal has to be bought or rented, insured, powered, repaired and visited. On a small shop counter that arithmetic never worked, which is why card acceptance in Tanzania stopped at hotels, supermarkets and fuel stations. Everywhere else ran on cash.

A printed code changed the arithmetic rather than the technology. It costs a merchant almost nothing to display, there is nothing to insure and nobody to send out when it breaks. That is why acceptance reached hardware shops, salons, bars, chemists and market stalls no acquirer would have driven to with a terminal. Mobile money had already taught the market to pay from a phone, so customers were ready before the merchants were.

For the institution, the fee on each transaction is the smaller half of the case. A merchant who accepts through you holds a settlement account with you, and the day's takings land in it rather than in a cash box or a personal wallet. That is deposit balance, visible turnover when the same merchant asks for working capital, and a business customer with a reason to stay. It matters most to banks growing an SME book, to fintechs whose whole business is acquiring, to telcos taking a wallet into the till, and to SACCOs and microfinance institutions whose members trade for a living.

The four questions a merchant will ask you

Did the money arrive. When do I get settled. What does this cost me. Can the person on my till do it without training. Merchants ask these in roughly that order, and the answers decide whether your code stays on the counter or is quietly covered over by somebody else's.

The first one happens in public. A customer holds up a phone showing a confirmation, the queue is waiting, and a shop assistant has to decide whether to hand over the goods. A merchant who cannot settle that at the counter stops accepting rather than risk it twice.

Settlement is a commercial promise, not a detail. Whatever you commit to, the merchant plans around it, because small traders buy tomorrow's stock out of today's takings, and they tell the shop next door the first time it slips. Price gets compared out loud with cash, which looks free to anyone who has never costed the counting, the shortages and the trip to the bank.

And the training question decides more than it appears to. The person at the till is rarely the owner, staff turn over, and whatever the service asks of them has to survive being explained once by a colleague.

Signing a merchant, and what they get afterwards

Merchants are signed, not acquired by accident. Onboarding comes first: a sales officer in the field or a merchant applying for themselves, the checks your policy requires, a settlement account, the pricing that applies, and something to put on the counter. A merchant who signs on Tuesday and cannot accept until next month has already gone back to cash.

Then acceptance, in the ways their customers want to pay: a code on the counter to scan, a code shown for one specific amount, a request sent to the customer to approve, an amount keyed in at the till, and payment inside an app or at an online checkout. Around it sits the rest. Several tills and several staff, each identifiable. Refunds within the rules you set. The day's takings visible while the day is still running. Settlement history the merchant can check without calling anyone. Reporting they can put beside their own books, and, for a chain, each outlet on its own as well as the group.

Your own people have a parallel list: approving merchants, applying pricing, suspending one, working disputes, and the view sales and finance need on who is accepting, who has gone quiet and who is growing. Merchants who stop accepting rarely say so. Which journeys launch first is decided with you.

A merchant does not want a code for every bank

Ask a shopkeeper to display a separate code for every bank and every wallet and you have handed the counter back to cash. The cards pile up, customers pick the wrong one, staff cannot say which payment belongs where, and the merchant favours whichever one causes the fewest arguments.

Interoperability is therefore a commercial question first. A merchant keeps the acceptance most of their customers can already pay with and drops the rest. Which arrangements you take part in, and on what terms, is most of how your offer looks at a counter, and that participation is yours to hold.

Worth saying plainly: a merchant is not an agent. An agent provides your services for commission; a merchant sells their own goods and gets paid. Their reasons for signing up are different, and so is what makes them stay. We build payments, agency banking and the channels that reach them, so acquiring can extend what you run or start something wider.

What standing up an acquiring business involves

Most of what decides whether an acquiring business works is arranged by you, and little of it is software. Start with the right to acquire. Banking in Tanzania is supervised by the Bank of Tanzania, and whether you acquire in your own name or under an arrangement with an institution that does is the first thing to settle. Beside it sits participation in the interoperable arrangements you want to accept from, each with its own terms, approvals and lead time. Those are commonly the longest wait in the project.

Then pricing and settlement, which are the offer rather than a detail of it. What a merchant is charged, what a large merchant can negotiate, when they are paid, and what you will put in writing. Price it where cash still looks cheaper and merchants display the code without ever pushing it. Settle later than merchants can live with and they use you for the customers who insist, and take cash from everyone else.

Then merchant policy. What makes an acceptable merchant, which trades you will not sign, what evidence you require of a market stall as against a supermarket, who may approve an exception, and what gets a merchant suspended. That is a risk appetite decision, and it sets how far into the market your sales team may go. Merchant records and customer payment data both fall under Tanzania's Personal Data Protection Act, and the positions behind that are yours.

Then the field, where acquiring businesses are actually won. Somebody signs merchants, visits them, replaces what has faded on the counter, shows new staff what to do, and answers the telephone when a merchant says the money did not arrive. Disputes need an owner too: a customer saying they paid and a merchant saying nothing came are standing in front of each other while it is decided.

Working with us

We start with discovery: the merchants you want, what your sales people meet in the field, the arrangements you already hold, and the pricing and settlement you can genuinely offer. That produces a scope and a plan, and the plan is yours whether or not we build it.

Through delivery you see working software in an environment you control rather than status reports, and the source code and documentation are yours from the first commit. Afterwards we support the service and train your people. There is no lock-in, by design and by contract.