Do you want someone to help you accept payments online? In this post learn how you can hire freelancers to integrate a payment gateway in Kenya to your website.

There are many online freelancers in Kenya ready to help businesses, organizations, and individuals collect payments for their products and services on their websites and blogs.

Common payment methods (like Lipa na M-PESA, Airtel Money, debit cards, credit cards) can be easily added to your shopping cart software / website / blog whether it runs on a content management system like WooCommerce, Magento, OpenCart, Joomla, ZenCart, WordPress or Prestashop.

The popular payment gateways freelancers can help you with include Kopo Kopo, iPay, Jambopay, Pesapal, DPO Group, Pesapal, Stripe and PayPal.

With Kopo Kopo you can:

• get help with registering for an M-PESA till number.
• get help adding Safaricom Lipa na M-PESA as a payment option to your online shop (aside from cash on delivery).
• explore the other services offered by Kopo Kopo to small businesses such as Masterpass QR (allow customers to pay by scanning a QR code) and Business OS.

With iPay Africa you can:

• get help adding the payment aggregator / gateway to your website, blog or mobile app. iPay makes it simple for organizations, institutions, small businesses and big companies to accept money from customers through M-PESA, Airtel Money, VISA and MasterCard debit and credit cards.
• get help exploring their API or services like eLipa Wallet, iPay POS, Bulk Pay and E-Invoicing.

With Jambopay you can:

• get help from freelancers with website and blog integrations to start accepting electronic payments from customers from M-PESA, debit cards, credit cards, JamboPay e-wallet, Airtel Money, Tigo Pesa and MTN Mobile Money.
• explore other services from this provider such as e-Government payment processing, donations (to fundraise or receive donations for your organization), bill payments (to pay your suppliers and others), till payments (accepting payments over the counter to your JamboPay e-wallet) and E-Ticketing (a service similar to one provided by Pesapal to businesses / sites selling tickets).

With Pesapal you can:

• get help creating a business account / merchant account and connecting it to your website or blog to accept payments via Pesapal M-PESA Paybill number, mVisa App (by scanning a QR code), NCBA Mobile, Co-Op Mobile, KCB Mobile, Airtel Money, Pesapal e-wallet, Family Bank Pesa Pap, VISA, MasterCard and American Express.
• get help adding and configuring plugins and extensions for various website builders and CMSs.
• get help exploring other services by this provider such as their point of sale service (Pesapal SABI POS), payment API in case you are hiring a coder for custom work.

With DPO Group you can:

• get help with adding their mobile payment processing / credit card processing payment system to your website, to make it easy for customers to pay you via M-PESA, Airtel Money, VISA, MasterCard, American Express, Vodacom, Tigo and MTN. You can use these services to collect payment in any currency.
• explore other services by this provider such as DumaPay, a mobile payments app (to accept payments from NFC enabled credit card & devices, via email, VISA On Mobile or QR code).

With Stripe & PayPal you can:

• get a personal account or business account and start receiving payments from people around the world already registered with the two services (PayPal and Stripe).
• get help adding your business email to your account, getting the email verified.
• get help upgrading your account from personal to business.
• get help adding your PayPal email to your shopping cart software.
• start accepting payments from a variety of debit card and credit card providers such as VISA, MasterCard, Discover or American Express.

Why use a payment gateway on your website

To make life easy for both you and your customers. For example if you are selling digital products (like ebooks, online courses, graphics, plugins or code snippets), there are people who will quickly jump on your site and make a purchase if they are provided with options to pay via card or mobile money.

These are people who normally wouldn’t buy from you say if you only had a book (something physical) or had to attend your course in person.

So you can accept payments from all currencies any time of the day. Once a payment gateway has been integrated with your site, people from all over the world (regardless of the difference in time zones) can just hop onto your site 24 hours a day to purchase the items you sell online.

Some of the providers listed above have other incentives for small businesses who decide to use their services.

Kopo Kopo and DPO for example can offer business financing to merchants on their platforms at rates much friendlier than some of the offerings from various banking institutions.

So, if this is something that appeals to you, you can start building a relationship (that can lead to you getting financing down the road) by using one or two gateways above.

You can use multiple payment gateways – one for a single / different currency so that you save money on currency exchange rates / conversions and the amount you pay in commissions to these payment providers. There are currency converter / currency switcher plugins you can use, if you decide to go down this route.

As a merchant, most of these providers will aggregate all the payments coming from your customers in one place – and then make it for easy for you to just login to their systems and transfer the monies to your bank account.

The process of getting help with payment integration: what should I do when hiring a freelancer to add a payment processor to my website?

First of all, you should know which of the payment gateways listed above you want to use. And then you also should know a little bit about the CMS / shopping cart you are going to use (WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, OpenCart etc.).

From there it is a matter of finding the right freelancer to help you. Check the listings in some of the categories listed on the homepage (Niabusiness.com).

Some of the categories to check include:

1. WordPress Services for Blogs & Websites.
2. WooCommerce Online Shop / E-Commerce Services.
3. Coding, Programming, Web & App Dev.

Reply to some of the ads. Talk to a few freelancers. Tell them what you want to accomplish. Tell them about the gateway you want help with. And tell them about the software that is powering your website or blog as well.

If they are able to deliver on your expectations, take things a level higher. Talk about turnaround time and how much you are willing to pay for their service.

You can then provide them with details of your logins (to your WordPress site for example), so they can do the work.

If you want them to create an account for you on the platforms I have mentioned above, provide them with the details to do so (your contact information usually).

Then test the gateway together, once it is integrated on your site. See that everything is working fine.

That is all there is to it.

If you want to do things yourself but need a little hand-holding, there are freelancers open to doing consultations. Again, check the categories listed above to find someone you can hire (talk to over the phone, via chat or email).