Swipe2Pay, a payment solutions startup looking to empower small businesses, has been carrying out a private beta test with 25 Small and Medium Entreprises in Uganda. These include saloons and spas, bars, boutiques and pharmacies owned by friends and family.
The test has lasted three months and Solomon Kitumba, Swipe2Pay founder, confirmed that it has been successful and they "have learned a lot of lessons." These beta testers, have helped them make several iterations based on the pain points the users have pointed out.
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It is on the back of this successful Private Beta that they're planning to embark on a public beta this coming November. This will cover 200 small and medium enterprises in Kampala for a period of two months. The pool will be drawn from a list of various businesses in the databases of bodies that work with SMEs.
We have a web portal which is a business intelligence (BI) tool. This allows SMEs to see the analytics of their business: What’s selling, what isn’t. They can see peak trading days and times in detail - Solomon Kitumba.
Asked what changes will be made as they head for public beta, Solomon pointed out that they plan to favor mobile as feedback from the private beta testers indicated that they prefer having to monitor their sales and inventory on mobile as opposed to the web.
"We are also planning to allow flexibility - as opposed to fixing them - in the pricing of the inventory as Ugandans still prefer bargaining and haggling over the prices of products and services," Solomon added.
One of the challenges Solomon Kitumba anticipates is the possibility of crippling at scale since they are making a huge leap from 25 users to 200. He, however, promises that the version for the public beta will be a "more revised version of the system with new features that'll be communicated on the day it'll be rolled."