Paynet Group has been marked for a role in the collection of park entry fees in some of Kenya’s busiest national parks and games reserves. The company which processes local and international card and electronic payments for major banks in East Africa has today announced a partnership with a leading game reserves revenue collection company, Earthview Management, which will see the introduction of efficient park entry fee payment solution, foul proof revenue recording as well as the issuance of smart cards in the tourism sector.
The system, first deployed at the Ol Pejeta game reserve, will be deployed at gates in game reserve and conservancies managed by Earthview Management, and will rely on real-time communication between the card processor’s financial switch in Nairobi and real-time payment devices to be installed at park gates.
“Payments of entry fees at park gates by tour operators using these smart cards will take seconds to process, and will pass through our Nairobi switch just like all other card and card-less transactions cleared through our switch each day,” said Richard Coate, Managing Director of PesaPoint, a subsidiary of the Paynet Group.
The smart cards will be issued to tour operators who will be required to swipe them at park gates to pay entry fees for tourists. Further, the cards will play multiple functions including being used to pay tour drivers’ salaries and allowances while still in the wild. To pay their drivers using the card, tour companies will simply credit money onto the card from their offices and their drivers and tour guides in the wild will receive it, and then can then pop into any gate that has the system to withdraw their money. “They could also get their money at any PesaPoint ATM or agent or at any PesaPoint branded ATMs like those of KCB, DTB, CfC Stanbic, Family Bank , FINA Bank and NIC Bank, doing away with the need to travel to their employers city offices,” said Mr Coate.
Earthview Management said the system has been “a huge success” at the Ol Pejeta conservancy where it was deployed three years ago: “We have asked Paynet Group to support the expansion of this system to other parks because revenue collection at the OlPejeta has been a big success, the park managers here only need to push a button to access financial data on the gate collections. This is the efficiency we want to introduce to other parks and reserves,” says Mr Martin Konzolo, a director at Earth View Management.
The system was first developed by engineers at Paynet Group to be a prepaid PIN protected card system that enable cost-effective payments of wages by owners of flower, sisal, tea and coffee farms as well as companies in the manufacturing sector, all of whom employ thousands of workers across the country. More innovations has resulted into the system’s ability to make thousands of payments at once to different persons in one stroke of a key, doing away with the risks of cash in transit and saving time as workers no longer have to travel to their banks to get their cash.
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