Digital payment systems, online transactions, mobile wallets: the story of digitized currency transactions in a highly regulated economy such as Nepal has been a true uphill battle. eSewa is a pioneer that has stuck through and battled regulatory hindrances for more than a decade. Since its inception, the company aims to make digital currency more convenient and accessible to the entire nation, a noble goal.
Therefore, when eSewa approached us with the opportunity to contribute to the convenience and accessibility of their payment systems, we jumped immediately!
Cash out
Cash out is a useful feature that is used by eSewa users who wish to withdraw or debit cash from their account through pre-assigned cash-out points. These points are actually local cold stores or stationeries who have partnered with eSewa and allow users to debit cash from their accounts.
eSewa app allows their users to search up the nearest cash points in their area according to the amount of cash they wish to debit and navigates them to these points.
Baato + eSewa: making “cash out” more accessible
The problem
When eSewa approached Baato, they already had an existing method for users to locate cash points. This feature was limited in its capacity as it could not suggest locations according to the amount of cash they wished to debit. Additionally, the older feature was also costing them a lot because they relied on Google APIs.
They were prepared with what they wanted: a reliable mapping interface to display their ‘cash points’ within 5/10 kms of the user’s location as well as the capability to direct them to this location.
The solution
After a couple meetings between technical team members from eSewa and Baato, the collectively concluded that Baato’s APIs were ideally suited for the bulk of eSewa’s needs. Building on the capabilities of our core APIs, Baato’s technical team also developed a customized API within two weeks to geospatially search ‘cash points’ and display those within the user’s area to fit eSewa’s geospatial search needs. By making use of the Baato Directions API, which delivers navigation routes along with trip distance, eSewa could then easily direct its users to their nearest cashpoints with voice instructions in both Nepali and English.
Testimonials
“We are immensely proud to partner with Kathmandu Living Labs for “Baato”. We always believed that mapping and navigation service should be an integral part of eSewa and should blend very naturally to our user experience. We were incredibly happy to learn that KLL had the service in the form of Baato. It blends naturally to Nepali culture with our own way of navigating around. Baato offers navigation based on local landmarks which feels very indigenous to Nepali. Besides, flexibility on pricing and partnering with a Nepali IT company adds to the pleasure of doing the business. We look forward to extending our integration across other features of eSewa App in near future.”
— Roshan Lamichhane, COO at eSewa Fonepay
“Baato’s documentation was superb and helped us quickly find answers to our queries. They provided us with a sample App to make our integration seamless and efficient and also made adjustments to their app so it could support lower versions on our end.
Baato’s development team also provided timely support to us and helped us launch this product within our timeline. In fact they went out of the way and provided support during off hours and weekends when we faced issues. Overall, their comprehensive documentation compliments their supportive development team.”
— Yajan Shrestha, Senior Mobile Team Lead, eSewa
The bigger picture
Cash points is just a tiny aspect of eSewa and Baato’s broader vision of making technological services available to the entire Nepali population. Baato and eSewa complement each other’s strengths and goals. eSewa provides payment services to its customers with an aim of making payments accessible to all Nepalis. Baato has developed a mapping platform that provides routing and navigation services to contextually put people in Nepal and the region on the map and interact comfortably with geography. Baato’s services are useful for eSewa to pinpoint the location of its customer, calculate travel distance and provide direction to the nearest cash points. A collaboration between Baato and eSewa can open up new opportunities as both the teams enjoy working with data, cultivating a local ecosystem and finding out-of-box solutions to solve the customer’s problems.
