Hi,
Pesapal is based on a trust account. Mobile money service providers also have trust accounts such that if am a mobile money user and i want to transfer money to a pesapal merchant, the money will be moved from the service provider's trust account to pesapal's trust account and also update our database[the merchant is credited with the amount]. Pesapal does not handle the money, we have the banks doing that for us.
Pesapal charges are as below:
0 - 5 Million : 3.5% of the transaction amount
5 - 15Million : 3.2% of the transaction amount
15 Million and above: 2.7% of the transaction amount
If a buyer/client sends a merchant X amount. pesapal will deduct a percentage[depending of the group as shown above] of the X amount. The new amount the merchant will receive is Y amount which is a percentage of X.
Ideally in the trust account pesapal has a total amount of T. Of the T amount, we have records that show Y of the T belongs to merchant M. When merchant M wants the money, they can now move it to their bank account. The current bank transfer charges are as below:
Money received from mobile money transfer:
Received After 1 day - 200KES
Received After 3 days - FREE
Money received from visa card transactions: 500KES
These are bank charges that are incurred by the merchant when transferring to their own bank accounts. The amount is fixed.
In summary, the charges incurred by a merchant in the entire cycle is the 3.5% per transaction and the bank charges [depending on the package i.e., 500KES, 200KES or FREE]
We are working on the buyer protection service that we are planning to have it ready next week.
How does it work?
- Buyers make a purchase online.
- Once we confirm we have received the amount, the status of the transaction is updated from PENDING To "TO BE SHIPPED". AT this instance the merchants account is not credited with the amount. The money is held in a trust account.
- Once the buyer has received the goods they will have to update the status as "received". At this point, the amount is now credited to the merchants account. If the buyer hasn’t received the goods or the is something wrong, they will update the status as disputed, our pesapal team, the merchant and the buyer have to solve this out.
