Loy Okezie
At the end of a dinner and networking event organized by VTNetwork Nigeria Ltd at the Civic Centre in Lagos last Saturday, I was convinced that an e-commerce revolution was underway in Nigeria.
The event gathered industry experts and professionals from the banking, telecoms and technology sector to celebrate the success of the VTN mobile payment platform in partnership with Bank PHB.
What is VTN?
VTN – Virtual Terminal Network is a revolutionary hybrid virtual/mobile payment network designed solely for developing economies that allows merchants and retailers to process transactions safely and securely from the Internet and mobile phones.
Simply put, VTN offers the missing link for many online financial solutions in Nigeria, thereby making e-commerce a reality in Nigeria. There are currently 2698 merchants on VTN Network.
Could it be like Paypal?
VTN takes advantage of Nigeria’s huge increase in mobile phone and Internet usage to provide a service that allows business people in Onitsha, for instance, to sell goods and services to people in Bauchi and get paid with VTN, even if the buyers don’t have VTN accounts.
With your VTN merchant account, your sales or services are no longer limited to buyers in your street or town. As a VTN personal account holder, you can load and transfer money to your customers or relations across Nigeria via the Internet or your GSM phone. Also, you can receive money from people anywhere across Nigeria.
My thoughts
VTN behaves like M-PESA in Kenya and Paypal in the U.S. In fact, VTN could become to Nigeria what these two platforms are to their respective countries, making it easier and safer to transact businesses.
Although, I think people will be skeptical (at first) to use the service, as was the case with Paypal when it was introduced in the U.S., it could grow to become the largest payment solution for Africa.
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10 Responses to With VTN, e-Commerce Gets Better in Nigeria!
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This looks very promising. The key to it's success will be widespread adoption and of course security. Seems they have a lot of merchants already, so it's down to it being as fraud proof as possible.
This is a much needed solution for Nigeria and the integration of mobile device payments is excellent for those in rural communities that do not have Internet or don’t necessarily know how to use the computer. For them two succeed they will need to do the following:
1) Market like there is no tomorrow i.e. they want to be the topic of discussion at all times.
2) Increase Fraud and Security protection. I’m of the opinion that on their first few years of operation a large chunk of their revenue should be used to invest in state of the art Security and Fraud systems. Once the people know there money is safe and that if their phone is stolen etc that they have no worries then they might have a hit on their hands!
I have known VTN for 2 years now, I haven't seen anything. I just peeped on to thier URL now and saw that there is a redesign (on of the finest around here). I am encouraging everyone to test their service. That's the only way to know if they are up to something bum.
Our business has flourished since I signed on with VTN.
In the past, we direct our customers have to come to our office to pay or pay into our Bank account
This is limiting the growth, but now the burden and limitation is removed with VTN
We now receive orders from places we had not anticipated and had to scale up to meet demands
Our initial apprehension about VTN was the question "How do we get our money"
We did a pilot asking some customers to pay to test the flow.
Surprisingly and for the first time in Nigeria the money moved and landed in our Bank account once we process withdraw. The fee is very moderate also.
I agree with the earlier post, they need to do massive marketing at the grass root level.
It's a dream come true for us.
i think your promise good and it will do us good but i’m yet to get to know you better but i trust you
We don't need another "Flash me Cash", what we need is a service that interfaces with ATM cards the same way Paypal does with Credit Cards.
The success of payments systems is based on serious branding campaigns so as to assure security of customers' money. I have never heard of this service until I read this post. Take that from a newshawk.
Yet another Nigerian payment failure. That is my prediction. I only hate the ecommerce they attach to it.
My friend, VTN is working for Nigeria. I don't know if you know anything about e-commerce
It's laughable to suggest interfacing with ATM cards in Nigeria like Paypal to credit card. That would have been an ideal solution, but Nigeria Banks are not ready for this. How do you explain banks blocking their debits card from use online, how do you deploy a real-time solution given the epileptic infrastructure in Nigeria. ? . We are talking about a real-time solution here for local and global audience. The fact that you have not heard about VTN is immaterial. The fact is, Nigeria is not there yet. Also VTN model is the best for Nigeria because global merchants wants guarantee of payments and you can't do that effectively if the source of funding cannot be guaranteed by VTN. So here you have it
Responseto :To Nigeria Web Hosting post above. Last time i checked Flash me cash is a money transfer solution within same bank. How can you compare VTN to flash. me cash? Why not try to use your ATM card to make a purchase on a web site in europe or america an see how well the accept it.? Also to educate you, you fund VTN the same way Americans or Europeans fund their visa/Mastercad debit card. You have to go to your bank and deposit funds . That's one way, there are other ways.
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