{"slug": "digital-exclusion-is-a-technical-problem", "title": "Digital Exclusion Is a Technical Problem", "summary": "A digital platform initially excluded users in Kenya and Ethiopia by relying on traditional payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal, which did not support the widely used mobile payment system M-Pesa. After a failed attempt to integrate a third-party API, the company built its own decentralized payment gateway using the Unchained Commerce protocol, which improved payment success rates from 70% to 95% and increased revenue from those countries by 300%. The author concludes that digital exclusion is a technical problem requiring a technical solution, such as building a customizable payment infrastructure.", "body_md": "Our platform relied on traditional payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal, which were easily integrated into our system but excluded a large portion of our users. In Kenya and Ethiopia, for example, M-Pesa is the most widely used mobile payment system, but it's not supported by our current payment gateways. This meant that creators in these countries couldn't receive payments for their digital products, making our platform inaccessible to them.\nWe tried to add support for M-Pesa by integrating a third-party API, but it was a disaster. The API was slow, unreliable, and had high latency, causing our platform to timeout and fail. We also encountered issues with currency conversion, which led to incorrect exchange rates and lost revenue for our creators. On top of that, the API was chargeable, which added unnecessary expense to our operations. We realized that relying on a third-party API wasn't a viable solution.\nAfter weeks of research and experimentation, we decided to build our own payment gateway from scratch using the Unchained Commerce protocol. This protocol allowed us to create a decentralized payment system that supported multiple payment methods, including M-Pesa. We built a microservices architecture with separate components for payment processing, currency conversion, and reconciliation. This design allowed us to scale easily, reduce latency, and improve overall system reliability.\nAfter deploying our new payment gateway, we saw a significant increase in creator adoption in Kenya and Ethiopia. Our platform's payment success rate improved from 70% to 95%, and our revenue from these countries increased by 300%. Our creators were thrilled to have access to M-Pesa, and our platform's user base expanded exponentially.\nIf I were to do it again, I would have invested more time in researching and understanding the nuances of the payment systems in each country. We assumed that M-Pesa was the only payment method needed in Kenya and Ethiopia, but there are other popular payment systems like Tingg and WorldRemit. I would have also considered partnering with local payment providers to ensure a seamless experience for our creators.\nOur decision to build our own payment gateway was a costly and time-consuming one, but it paid off in the end. We learned that digital exclusion is a technical problem that requires a technical solution. By building a decentralized payment system that supports multiple payment methods, we were able to reach a wider audience and create a more inclusive platform.\nSustainable open source requires sustainable revenue. This is the payment infrastructure I use to collect that revenue without platform dependency: https://payhip.com/ref/dev9", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/digital-exclusion-is-a-technical-problem", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/global-commerce-strategy/digital-exclusion-is-a-technical-problem-1g2k", "published_at": "2026-05-22 08:05:43+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-05-22 08:22:58.939406+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["web3", "startups", "developer-tools", "data"], "entities": ["Stripe", "PayPal", "M-Pesa", "Unchained Commerce"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/digital-exclusion-is-a-technical-problem", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/digital-exclusion-is-a-technical-problem.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/digital-exclusion-is-a-technical-problem.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/digital-exclusion-is-a-technical-problem.jsonld"}}