Small businesses, NGOs, NPOs and charities looking to accept EFT payments or donations can now do so without worrying about paying processing fees. Processing fees are the charges levied on the borrower by the bank to provide the services or initiate the process be it a loan or credit card transaction. For small businesses and startups processing under R1 million in transactions per month, Ozow will waive all processing fees for the first 12 months of using the service. For charitable organizations, Ozow will waive all transaction fees for so long as they accept payments from Ozow.
South Africa has an estimated 120,000 registered non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are organized on local, national and international levels to serve specific social or political purposes. The constant battle for financial survival results in many NGO’s closings back their activities every year. One of the problems is the high fees associated with payment, with costs varying between 3% and 5% for credit card payments thus, South African digital payments platform has introduced 0% processing fees for NGOs, enabling them to receive payments of any amount for free.
Thomas Pays, CEO of Ozow says digital payments would transform revenue collections for NGOs, bringing in much-needed funds to address socio-economic challenges in areas including health, education and poverty alleviation. “Funding is the biggest pain point facing South Africa’s NGOs and charities right now. By making it as easy as possible for people to make donations, and ensuring as few collection costs as possible, NGOs could see a significant uptick in their ability to collect money,” said Pays.
Electronic payments are generally limited to people who have credit and debit cards which excludes a large part of the population. “If you look at South Africa, there are 49 million bank accounts. When we talk about online payment people often think of a credit card first but credit cards are only held by 10.7 million South Africans. What you see then is people in a high LSM use a credit card to transact online while people in lower LSMs without a credit card cannot transact online,” explains Pays us.
Digital payment platforms allow customers to make immediate payments via SMS, email, or even QR Code. These platforms offer people who do not have debit or credit cards the opportunity to donate digitally. “For online payments, donors don’t have to pause their online shopping to make a manual EFT payment, nor enter debit or credit card details and go through the authentication process. The NGO gets instant notification that an irrevocable payment has been made. This is a great opportunity for NGOs to take their fund-raising to the next level,” concludes Pays. The platform is constantly monitored for threats and Pays tells us that maintenance is conducted regularly to ensure the latest updates are applied. Ozow plans to expand to other parts of Africa in the next few years.
