My 250 wishes for Rwanda 🇷🇼: 1 of 250

Hello everyone,
Today I’m beginning a series of stories about the wishes I have for my country, Rwanda 🇷🇼.

1. Fully Working Online Payments
   
   I remember when many of us saw the Internet for the first time. It was in 2001, just a year after the rumors that the world 🌎 would end in the year 2000. Well, I guess they were probably referring to the end of isolation and the emergence of globalization 😎.
   In any case, we embraced it nicely and I think we’re not going back. It started with news and emails -I remember when I opened the first email address in yahoo😆. It was really fun and innovative.

The internet has really changed many things about how we live and do business. Who would think in the year 2000 that today we wouldn’t be able to access our bank accounts if the network was unavailable or not working well? Who could imagine that the government would make its services accessible online?
For these and many other questions, the answers are on the Internet and many of them we shall discuss.

Today our first pertinent question is on ePayments. No matter how much efforts have been put in place in order to get this working, issues are still there and really frustrating.

While it is true that we have ePayment systems, issues around them make the processes almost impossible and sometimes not trustable.

I remember in 2015 at the sidelines of World Economic Forum in Kigali, a sideline meeting took place at the car-free-zone whereby the issue was discussed and proposals were later sent to the government for intervention. A few days later I even heard that the ministry of trade was putting up a budget to support the inniciative.

However, from that time till today I still wonder why the online payments are still not working 100% in Rwanda 🇷🇼 and what could be done in order to fix the issues that are hindering the processes.

Below are my suggestions:

1. To equip local banks with the capacities to independently integrate Visa and Master Card ePayment gateways and especially the APIs for online payments;
2. To negotiate the facilitation of PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Facebook Pay, etc. in Rwanda 🇷🇼;
3. To get country recognition by big international companies such as:
   a. Amazon: today this company doesn’t send most of its products to Rwanda and especially the eBooks! The computer application won’t be installed at all, yet this is the best eBook service provider in the world 🤷🏽‍♂️
   b. PayPal: this is a serious service that allows people to make online payments without having to always input their card information. The money-receiving-service is not available in Rwanda and many people just have to go through Kenya in order to process their payments;
   c. Apple. Despite the fact that Apple has an official representation in Rwanda, the company still hasn’t added our country on the list of supported countries especially if you want to link accounts and devices;
   d. Skype. This company and its applications for both individual clients as well as corporates are available in Rwanda but you won’t be able to link your mobile number to the accounts 🤷🏽‍♂️;
   e. Spotify. This company and its application has become the first music 🎶 repository and player in the world, but it still doesn’t work in Rwanda 🤷🏽‍♂️;
   f. Etc.

In view of the above and in relation to the country’s innitiative to promote innovation, I would recommend this to be among the priorities of the ministries having related activities in their attributions: Ministry of ICT, Minicom & Minecofin.

Disclaimer:
The ideas written above are just personal views and do not constitute any obligation to whomsoever may be concerne😧