As in many other continents, women in formal employment in Africa face the challenge of managing their work with family and household affairs.
As such, women tend to become entrepreneurs both from necessity and equally from opportunity. The hurdles and challenges faced by women entrepreneurs range from inadequate financing to legal representation and hiring skilled as well as managing employees.
This is contrary to the significant contribution to the African economy by women-owned businesses. About 50 percent of all micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) are owned by women and contribute to about 20% of Africa’s GDP.
Women tend to be time constrained due to combining family duties with the requirements of their business. Moreover, women’s businesses are twice as likely as male-owned firms to be operating from home.
The registration process with financial institutions is time consuming which may deter a lot of women-owned MSMEs from signing up hence resorting to cash and personal mobile money payments.
Pesapal however, a leading payment solution provider, has a 24-hour set-up process from signup to operation. Additionally, Pesapal has completely removed the barriers of entry for a business to start accepting and enjoying the benefits of digital payments by having zero sign-up cost.
One of the most important barriers to growing a business that disproportionately affects women is access to financing. Pesapal offers on top of it's payment solution, ready made products that can be used without initial capital investment and the need for technical developers.
Studies have supported that business-to-business linkages between women-led enterprises and larger businesses experienced an increase in profits. As such Pesapal is enabling card & mobile money payments for women-owned MSMEs by democratizing payment tools for both online and physical stores. Moreover, for women-in business who have to balance between operational tasks and tracking their financial performance, Pesapal’s merchant dashboard has real-time reports making it easy to stay in the know of your business’ sales.
Here are a few use cases of some of the top Pesapal women-owned MSMEs!
Purpink is a leading online gift shop that was founded in 2012 by Diana Mwaniki. When she was diversifying into e-commerce, she found a reliable online payment gateway in Pesapal and has integrated to enable card payments to over 10000 customers.
SkinSol is a skin care parlour owned by Domiana Mwangangi. Pesapal Sabi PDQ was a step up from cash only since most of her clients preferred to pay via card. Eventually, since all the card transactions were settled into her bank account, she qualified for a business loan from her bank that provided an opportunity to expand her business.
Monty’s is one of the pioneer shops in Sarit Centre that has been operational for 35 years. When the owners, Ketu and Karishma, decided to start accepting payments online, they found Pesapal’s plugin offered the most comprehensive range of payment varying from credit card to mobile money.
Watch more inspiring stories on Pesapal YouTube Channel.
Pesapal provides a simple, safe, and secure way for businesses to accept payments in Africa. We partner with credit card companies, banks, and mobile networks to give consumers as many payment options as possible. Pesapal offers point-of-sale (POS) and ecommerce payment processing support.
These include:
