M-pesa is one of the largest mobile money providers in the whole of Africa. The convenience afforded by this service is unparalleled since it enables one to pay for goods, services, and even bills from the mobile phone. It also features the ability to deposit, transfer, withdraw, and even access credit services. As such, it is no surprise that there are over 50 million active M-pesa users. With M-pesa being one of the most widely used forms of payment in Kenya, many businesses rely on it for daily transactions. From receiving client payments to paying for orders, small to medium size businesses in Kenya interact with M-pesa in one way or another. The regular use of M-pesa for SMEs creates the need for book-keeping and tracking. With most businesses relying on manual entries, managing M-pesa records can be a nightmare. Consequently, businesses are increasingly becoming aware of the need for automation.
The majority of SMEs are not capturing customer data automatically. Moreover, the reliance on manual data entry runs the risk of having data entry-related errors. Automation is vital to SMEs using M-pesa as it eliminates the headaches related to errors. For instance, a business may lose a client because of careless errors in data entry. For instance, if the business fails to capture data correctly in their manual entries and leaves out a client's payment, they may accuse the client of not paying. Such a misunderstanding can be resolved amicably in many instances. However, in some circumstances, such an error on the part of the business can result in losing the client for good. Similarly, businesses also run the risk of losing money because of poor data entry, especially when dealing with lazy staff or careless staff. Therefore, the need for automation in data entry is undeniable.
There are several reasons why businesses fail to use new technologies to upgrade their experiences. One of the most common ones is ignorance. Many small businesses are unaware of the availability of tools such as Lipa Solutions that can capture and organise clients' data for M-pesa transactions. Another reason is the lack of interest and the fear of the unknown. Many people are comfortable with doing things manually even though it is hectic and are not willing to improve their business experience. As a result, many such individuals may continue to ignore their problems rather than solve them. However, the most common reason for failing to adopt automation is the perceived high cost of automation. Many SMEs assume that the cost of automation is high and opt to do things manually. These factors act as hindrances to automation and cause people to continue struggling with quickly solvable problems.
Lipa Solutions is a valuable system as it not only addresses the aforementioned problems but also provides unique features such as building a contact list, can send out acknowledgement receipts and generating reports. Moreover, Lipa Solutions is highly effective in organizing data. First, you can filter data based on clients and view all the transactions made by a specific client. Such information can be very beneficial to a business. The system also allows the user to filter M-pesa payments based on daily, weekly, monthly or yearly transactions. The user can also send out messages to users on their mobile phone, which can be very handy for promotions and even schedule messages for later. Another important feature of Lipa Solutions is the use of customized links for social media, websites or even messages. Users can append the link to various platforms and use it to collect M-pesa payments. You can test it out at lipa.me/simple. By using such an automation tool, SMEs can benefit greatly by eliminating the challenges associated with the manual entry of M-pesa transactions.
As with many other sectors of finance, M-pesa users have become a target of fraudsters. In turn, Safaricom has announced changes to its API in an effort to protect client data. Due to these changes, M-pesa will protect client data by hiding the phone number of the transaction as well as the second and last names of the payers. These efforts have posed yet another challenge to automation since the company will not be providing this data. As a result, the automation systems that relied on these have been rendered useless. However, Lipa Solutions allows clients to input their data when making payments. As such, the system is able to overcome this hurdle and continues providing valuable data to the user. By choosing Lipa Solutions, you chose to take back valuable time through automation. Moreover, the system is active 24-7, which means that you do not have to worry about updating records manually or missing important payments. You also manage to monitor your M-pesa transactions at any time and reach out to your customers through message campaigns making it a very reliable system.
By Christine Njoki - Published 30th Jun 2022, 10:03pm
