By: Kaliena Joy Bowen
For the third consecutive year, a Georgia State University team has placed within the top 25 undergraduate teams at e-Fest and the Schulze Entrepreneurship Challenge. The team representing Georgia State University for the 2020 e-Fest is Ethiopay. They are a centralized global payment platform that currently enables users a simple and convenient way to transfer and/or purchase cross border bill pay, money transfer, mobile data, and mobile minutes between the United States and Ethiopia. Ethiopay co-founders Daniel Hadgu (B.B.A. ‘20) and Minas Yohannes (B.B.A. ‘20) are Eritrean descent while Michael Gizachew is of Ethiopian descent and they all struggled to send funds between the U.S. and their family abroad. Together they created a way to affordably and efficiently transfer money overseas.
Co-founder Daniel Hadgu states, “In my journey of understanding what it truly means to help others and become an effective leader, I have uncovered the power of innovation.” For two years now, Ethiopay has been in development. Their website allows individuals from North America and Europe to send payments for electricity bills, health insurance, school fees, and more to individuals in Ethiopia. Ethiopay fits the unique financial technology needs of Ethiopians. They hope to help Ethiopians in the diaspora reach individuals at home by providing seamless payments. Hadgu and Yohannes entered this year’s competition to share their innovative venture and gain exposure.
To compete, the Ethiopay team had to submit a short video detailing their venture and create a slide deck composed of a detailed description and analysis of Ethiopay. After submitting their entry, they were notified that Ethiopay had made the top 25 undergraduate teams. While preparing for the second part of the competition where teams had to present their businesses, this year’s e-Fest competition was canceled due to the recent COVID-19 outbreak. However, the Eix and Shultze family foundation are still awarding deserving entrepreneurs and universities they represent.
Ethiopay is striving to address the increasing global challenges faced by those in Ethiopia. Hadgu and Yohannes are eager to enter the competition next year to finish with hopes of taking home the prize for Georgia State University and Ethiopay.
The belated national e-payment switch, Ethio-Pay, serving the integration of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) and Point of Sale (POS) machines, celebrated its official launch on May 12, 2016.
Delayed procurement and delivery of necessary hardware and banks’ lack of readiness to commit were among causes of the late inauguration, Daryl Berg, managing director of BPC Banking Technologies in Africa, Eth-switch’s software vendor, stated.
The software installation incorporates four segments. Enabling system integration that allows the banks to interconnect and functional banking system testing were the first two. The company stated these phases took the most time. Step three, completion of the pilot phase in real environment transactions to ensure the switch’s facilitation of banking accounts, took almost a year before step four, the official opening of Ethio-Pay.
Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) was not part of the switch when it was deployed last month. It was finally incorporated two days before the official launch day. BPC’s Banking Technologies Partner in Ethiopia, SSC communications programme manager, Abeyu KIbret, states that the late bond was due to the incomplete technical integration of Construction & Business Bank (CBB) merge with CBE.
CBE missed out on close to 5,700 transactions in which customers cashed out 4.5 million Br. The charge for the service costs the customer 50 cents for each 100 Br withdrawn. As people have finally started to use the system, banks and Eth-Switch had equally split the 22,500 Br in service charges collected from users since the ‘soft launch’ on April 20. The fees for using ATMs owned by banks other than the one that issued the card, are incurred by the customer only. All member banks audit their transaction on a daily basis.
“We have our own regulation to solve possible audit dispute between banks. We also have a system to prove the audit’s accuracy,” said Bizuneh Bekele, CEO of Eth-Switch S.C.
After last month’s unofficial launch of Ethio-Pay, customers of other banks complained that the Bank of Abyssinia’s (BoA) ATMs did not provide service for other cards; guards of some branches unaware of the complete switch operation were seen forbidding customers from trying their cards at the ATMs.
Oddly enough, 16pc of the amount transacted took place through BoA’s Machines.
Bank of Abyssinia’s Information Systems & Technology Vice President, Yoseph Kibret, put all the complaints aside, stating that to the Bank’s knowledge, it is fully operational in all services of the system. At the time the operation started, many a bank official was not aware of the start.
“It is all a result of low disclosure on the system start-up. We were among the banks engaged in the pilot phase,” said Yoseph.
The switch does not treat banks that have fewer ATMs any differently than those with larger networks in place. In fact, the system enables hosted members, banks without their own payment switches, to issue ATM cards without having to invest in a network of machines. It is also open to the integration of newcomers in the future without additional payments for letting their customers transact on other ATMs, the CEO added.
“What makes Ethio Pay profitable is not the number of ATMs; it rather is the large numbers of users. Our concern now is to work on promoting the system for increased customer involvement,” said Bizuneh.
Forty seven per cent of the transactions carried out since the informal launch, a total of 4.5 million Br, was from depositors of Awash and Dashen Banks, that already control a third of the Ethiopian market share.
BPC was awarded the contract two years after the initial tender was floated on February 2012. The company revised its offer from 10 million Br to four million Br and snatched the deal that their competitor Compass Plus had almost closed. BPC reduced its financial proposal when Eth-switch revised its Terms of Service (TOR) removing the major project elements like the data centre, transfer of knowledge and hands-on training by only putting the switch system in the spotlight.
Eth-Switch is a share company established in 2011 with 80 million Br capital. With the central bank as entrusted administrator of the national switch, all banks are required to be members.
The belated national e-payment switch, Ethio-Pay, serving the integration of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) and Point of Sale (POS) machines, celebrated its official launch on May 12, 2016.
Delayed procurement and delivery of necessary hardware and banks’ lack of readiness to commit were among causes of the late inauguration, Daryl Berg, managing director of BPC Banking Technologies in Africa, Eth-switch’s software vendor, stated.
The software installation incorporates four segments. Enabling system integration that allows the banks to interconnect and functional banking system testing were the first two. The company stated these phases took the most time. Step three, completion of the pilot phase in real environment transactions to ensure the switch’s facilitation of banking accounts, took almost a year before step four, the official opening of Ethio-Pay.
Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) was not part of the switch when it was deployed last month
. It was finally incorporated two days before the official launch day. BPC’s Banking Technologies Partner in Ethiopia, SSC communications programme manager, Abeyu KIbret, states that the late bond was due to the incomplete technical integration of Construction & Business Bank (CBB) merge with CBE.
CBE missed out on close to 5,700 transactions in which customers cashed out 4.5 million Br. The charge for the service costs the customer 50 cents for each 100 Br withdrawn. As people have finally started to use the system, banks and Eth-Switch had equally split the 22,500 Br in service charges collected from users since the ‘soft launch’ on April 20. The fees for using ATMs owned by banks other than the one that issued the card, are incurred by the customer only. All member banks audit their transaction on a daily basis.
“We have our own regulation to solve possible audit dispute between banks. We also have a system to prove the audit’s accuracy,” said Bizuneh Bekele, CEO of Eth-Switch S.C.
After last month’s unofficial launch of Ethio-Pay, customers of other banks complained that the Bank of Abyssinia’s (BoA) ATMs did not provide service for other cards; guards of some branches unaware of the complete switch operation were seen forbidding customers from trying their cards at the ATMs. Oddly enough, 16pc of the amount transacted took place through BoA’s Machines.
Bank of Abyssinia’s Information Systems & Technology Vice President, Yoseph Kibret, put all the complaints aside, stating that to the Bank’s knowledge, it is fully operational in all services of the system. At the time the operation started, many a bank official was not aware of the start.
“It is all a result of low disclosure on the system start-up. We were among the banks engaged in the pilot phase,” said Yoseph.
The switch does not treat banks that have fewer ATMs any differently than those with larger networks in place. In fact, the system enables hosted members, banks without their own payment switches, to issue ATM cards without having to invest in a network of machines. It is also open to the integration of newcomers in the future without additional payments for letting their customers transact on other ATMs, the CEO added.
“What makes Ethio Pay profitable is not the number of ATMs; it rather is the large numbers of users. Our concern now is to work on promoting the system for increased customer involvement,” said Bizuneh.
Forty seven per cent of the transactions carried out since the informal launch, a total of 4.5 million Br, was from depositors of Awash and Dashen Banks, that already control a third of the Ethiopian market share.
BPC was awarded the contract two years after the initial tender was floated on February 2012. The company revised its offer from 10 million Br to four million Br and snatched the deal that their competitor Compass Plus had almost closed. BPC reduced its financial proposal when Eth-switch revised its Terms of Service (TOR) removing the major project elements like the data centre, transfer of knowledge and hands-on training by only putting the switch system in the spotlight.
Eth-Switch is a share company established in 2011 with 80 million Br capital. With the central bank as entrusted administrator of the national switch, all banks are required to be members.
mehdi-ezzaoui
