Afripay
Mezzanine Floor, Titan Complex
Chaka Road (off Argwings Kodhek Road, near Yaya Center)
Tel: +254-(20)-2730770
Mobile: +254-(722)-256368
Website : www.afripay.net
Email: sales@afripay.net

In the developed world, almost everything can be bought and sold online, and so it often is. On my most recent visit to the US, a couple of years ago, I asked a good girlfriend to recommend stores that she thought I should visit during my then-quest to buy a new laptop. My friend seemed a little flabbergasted. She couldn’t understand why I would go through all the trouble of shopping for a laptop in person when she felt I could do so more efficiently online. Her reaction surprised me a little bit. The African that I am (or at least that I was at the time) was used to shopping for things in person and, especially in the case of an expensive purchase, much preferred to physically see the item I was purchasing before I actually paid for it.

This experience was to be my first aperçu of how pervasive shopping online had become in the Western world. Later, during that same trip, I often saw my parents (who were soon to be 60 years old at the time) and brothers do the most mundane things (like buying books) as well as some not-so-mundane things (like buying complex musical instruments) online, seemingly without giving it a second thought.

This was a far cry from my reality in Kenya at the time. Although I moved in pretty technologically savvy circles, partaking in e-commerce was not a main stream activity for most people that I knew. Although the reasons for this were many, I am pretty sure one of the main reasons for this was that so few of the people I knew had credit cards (and this was pre-M-pesa days in the case of local e-commerce). Speaking for myself, the lack of a credit card was definitely the reason I never sought to buy anything online or even subscribe to some of the online services that I found interesting. Do you find yourself in the same situation? Continue reading →