Uganda: Open Software to Cut Transactional Costs

Kampala — Digital financial service providers need telecommunication agencies and banks to open up their software so that they can transact on their platforms.Team Kgsr

The software program – Application Programming Interface (API) – lets software programs talk to one another to permit the transport of a given carrier.

Mr. Richard Ndahiro, the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) digital finance expert, addressed reporters during an API workshop at Sheraton on Tuesday, stating APIs join 0.33 events – builders and economic services to installing price structures allowing delivery of innovative services that deal with wishes of clients.

This way, the prices of transactions, including paying application payments, will lessen due to bypassing aggregators selling the APIs to virtual provider carriers at a fee.

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Mr. Vincent Mwende, a coffee farmer in Kapchorwa, was introduced to PAYG Sun as a part of the UNCDF’s work in digitizing agro-value chains.

He became able to buy solar lighting fixtures for his home because he could pay for the sun in installments over time, making it low-priced to buy the home sun gadget. Delivering such a service is made feasible by integrating the offerings of a solar corporation and a telecom organization using mobile cash. The integration is technically enabled with the aid of APIs.

Mr. Ron Web, the direct economic services Safaricom Limited, said starting up the APIs in Kenya has allowed many different developers to effortlessly use Safaricom as a price enabler, allowing their clients to use and pay for their services at minimum costs without difficulty.

In Uganda, many provider companies, pay-TV service carriers, and Umeme have needed to integrate the cell money charge platform into their offerings. But for their clients to pay the usage of cell money, these utility provider carriers have had to go through a third-celebration aggregator who buys the API from the telecom and later sells it to them at a rate, charging a transactional charge to permit the fee.

Mr. Ndahiro explained that when you pay your Umeme, the additional Shs1,000 you usually charge is a service fee that goes to the 0.33 celebration aggregator to facilitate the transaction.

He explains that open APIs can permit provider carriers to immediately get the right of entry to the API from the telecom companies, thereby disposing of a third birthday party and, in the end, lowering the transaction costs.

“By decreasing the limitations to access key APIs, PSPs open the innovation area for external developer skills to suggest new solutions to the marketplace. The advantages of this are tremendous for stakeholder answers, extra utilization, and revenue,” he said.

Although the concept of Open APIs has existed in East Africa, it remains a new idea and commercial enterprise model for enterprise players in Uganda.

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