Integration of an African payment service for a project in Uganda
UNCC is the National Cultural Center of Uganda, which develops and promotes cultural and artistic activities in the country.
The main mission of the organization is to preserve, develop and promote the art and culture of Uganda.
Field: non-profit organization for the development of the cultural activities of the country
Country: Uganda
Website: UNCC
UNCC combined the National Theater and the Gallery. Its platform gathers sellers and provides services for holding exhibitions, events, and selling objects of national art.
The customer’s project was developed on the CS-Cart Multi-Vendor platform in order to unite all those interested and provide an opportunity not only to place, but also to purchase unique products. It was necessary to integrate a payment system that would fit the local mentality and become a convenient way to pay and settle accounts with sellers.
Main goals
- Allow customers to pay in different ways.
- Allow sellers to receive money on their account.
- Automate settlements with sellers to avoid errors and delays.
What we developed
Choice of payment system
While most online platforms allow card payments, only a small portion of the Ugandan population uses debit and credit cards. Add to this the native love of residents for mobile phones, and as a result, we get the prevalence of payment by mobile payments.
This is also confirmed by the official statistics of the Bank of Uganda (more than 21 million active users of mobile accounts).
As a result, the choice was made in favor of the Flutterwave payment system.
It allows you to pay in 150 world currencies and offers several payment methods: cards, mobile payments, bank transfers and even barter. By providing various payment options, we will create opportunities for the future to scale the audience, subject to the development and popularization of other payment methods.
Flutterwave works like a payment aggregator and allows you to process payments without opening a bank account. All payments are processed on the service side, only the transaction fee is paid.
Role differentiation and payment processing
The main routing of payment from the buyer to the seller is built as follows:
When paying for the order, the buyer is sent to the Flutterwave service, where the transaction takes place. The entire amount goes to the account of the UNCC site. Funds to the seller from UNCC can be received in two ways:
The buyer can pay for the order in 2 ways:
- Bank transaction;
- Mobile payment.
Since mobile payments are more common in the country, mobile payment will be considered by default.
For settlements with merchants, you can change this setting and make a bank transfer the main method.
To do this, the seller only needs to provide bank account details.
For each seller, the administrator sets a minimum limit – a certain amount of Ugandan shillings – for withdrawing funds from the platform.
This will allow you to sort sellers, because in one place items of various price ranges can be sold from small art objects to furniture made of precious wood.
All transaction fees on the Flutterwave service are paid by the seller.
Integration, development of functionality and creation of automation
- After placing an order, the client is redirected to the Flutterwave payment page.
- After making the payment, it goes back to the UNCC website.
To exchange data between UNCC and the Flatterwave payment system, we used API and Webhooks methods.
The main difference between Webhooks and the usual API integration is that as soon as the requested translation is confirmed by the administrator on the UNCC platform, this event is immediately reported to the Flatterwave service. In the case of the API, the service constantly sends requests to see if the event has occurred, i.e. whether the transfer is confirmed.
Opportunities and functionality on the part of the seller
Additional fields have been added to the seller page to enter data for withdrawing funds, depending on whether it is a bank or mobile transfer.
For the seller, we have added additional fields:
- current balance available for withdrawal;
- transfer status;
- transfer amount.
This will allow you to control and see your financial statements, as in a CRM system.
Opportunities and functionality on the part of the administrator
Features and functionality on the part of the administrator
Since payment can be made from other countries and banks, the administrator can add the necessary fields for the necessary financial data.
All transfers to merchants are controlled and confirmed by the UNCC platform administrator. To do this, translation requests first go to moderation, after which the administrator can approve or reject each translation separately or do it simultaneously for all.
The administrator can filter all requests by status:
- waiting;
- approved;
- rejected.
And also change the status manually if the information is automatically reflected incorrectly.
Each payment contains all the necessary information:
- the date;
- status;
- commission amount;
- the ability to add a comment.
Automation of mutual settlements with sellers
The administrator can schedule transfers to merchants for each week.
For this you need:
- select the desired period in days;
- set the minimum amount on the balance for the transfer.
Settlement planning allows you to:
- reduce the time of routine operations;
- standardize processes through simple rules;
- increase productivity by avoiding manual errors or delays;
- increase seller loyalty by guaranteeing weekly payouts.
Integration with Flutterwave is ideal for the local mentality.
As a result, the customer received:
- Easy setup of automatic mutual settlements once a week, if the necessary conditions are met.
- Fast processing speed of the application and the minimum number of required documents.
- Low transfer fees for small amounts of payments, which is ideal for making transactions on the online platform of a municipal organization.
- The ability to control all payments on your side due to preliminary moderation.
- Opportunities to expand online payment methods, taking into account the popularization of new methods in the country.
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