Making a Case for Subscription Businesses in Nigeria

As an African, I know that one of the drawbacks of online transactions is payment gateways through which we can make a purchase or do business and get paid. A lot of people have written about how the payment space needs a savior and how messy things are even though there are quite a number of players.

However, things are getting better these days with a number of interesting innovations aimed at revolutionizing the space, I have seen quite a few and it is quite encouraging. But then, a lot still has to be done to not only ensure that people can buy and pay for stuff online, but to also see to it that businesses in Nigeria and Africa at large enjoy a seamless electronic payment system needed for a thriving technology ecosystem, a cashless economy and better businesses.

For some time now, I have been considering possible solutions to these problems as I’m wired to think that there is always a way out as a result of my training and experiences. I studied Economics in the University and was going to toe a career path in Finance or Management even though I had shown interest in startups when I attempted to build an online football quiz game portal — SoccerQuiz, with my course mate, Ibro. After school, however, I found myself working with a tech startup in Lagos. I also had short stints in investment banking and working with a leading ecommerce startup. I still was partly working on SoccerQuiz, before I had the opportunity to join MEST where I met Maxwell, who is now my co-founder!

Maxwell has experience in payment solutions and cyber security and he had built solutions for one of the biggest payment companies in Nigeria and since I also have a lot of interest in Financial Technology, we often talk about how disorganized our payments systems are and how these gateways should actually help businesses make more money and contribute to our economy. We acknowledged that a lot of players in Nigeria are doing a good job, but then we thought the complexity could be reduced if we can do something about the friction and fragmentation in the process we have right now, which has been a major barrier to adoption. Our answer is SlushPay.

Our mission at SlushPay is to help businesses in Africa succeed by providing simple payment solutions.

At SlushPay, we help businesses accept and manage subscription payments through different methods starting with credit/debits cards. We are doing this so that businesses can focus on growing their business without spending time and money negotiating and dealing with different complex payment integrations. We are also working with payment services providers to simplify the integration process and help them acquire more merchants so that they can focus on building the best user experience that will drive wider electronic payment adoption without compromising security.

We focus on ensuring that subscription and recurring payments becomes a simple and viable option for businesses. This has been a big deal because there is currently no effective system that adequately supports them. This extends beyond just integrating a gateway that supports recurring and automated payments, but providing a platform with the unique features that are tailored towards helping subscription-based businesses and organizations that need to accept recurring payments.

Our technology supports features like card-less payment (charging returning customers without having them enter their card details again); real time analytics and business insights; dynamic payment forms (bill customers even without a website); and others that we are super excited about (all can be seen on our website). We have PCI Level 1 Security and all transactions are communicated through a PCIDSS Compliant and 3D secure payment gateway via an SSL Encrypted channel.

If you have a business and you are reading this, SlushPay helps grow your business in the following ways:

• You can start receiving online payments without complex integrations or upfront costs.
• We help increase your revenue and customer retention with recurring billing.
• You get transaction details and important payment insights, you can use to make immediate business decisions.
• You can monitor your revenue immediately and forecast future revenues.
• You can recover lost revenue that occurs due to card declines.
• You can improve your customer experience with card-less transactions and
• You can start all these without writing a single line of code or even if you don’t have a website yet but need to accept payment.

If you have read up to this point, you’ll probably want to request for a demo account to see how we can help your business grow and if you do not have a business that needs to accept payment yet, please tell a friend about SlushPay. There should be no barrier to your success and that’s what we stand for!