Practice

Merchant Enablement

The Inclusive IPS should optimize the merchant (i.e. merchant selling goods and services, as well as billers) experience for payers (consumer and business end users) as well as the merchant payees.

Pay Everywhere for Anything

End users can send and receive payments for all necessary purposes

How to Implement

Guidance

Understand merchant payment needs.

Merchants are significant users of an Inclusive IPS and have widely varying needs. Early stakeholder engagement is needed to understand how the diverse conditions (e.g. internet, electricity, usage of business software to record sales) of sole proprietors and other micro merchants (MSE) compare to those of small and medium-sized businesses (SMB), how both differ from enterprise merchants such as chain stores, other retailers, and billers (such as utilities), and the impact of gender on those needs.

Design for merchant payment needs.

After cataloging the varied needs of merchants as acceptors and originators of payments, ensure that Scheme technical requirements and rules support seamless commerce for all types of end users.  A merchant should not need to have a point-of-sale terminal to serve basic commerce transactions.

Support enabling payment messages and tools.

The Scheme should ensure that interoperable payment via QR code and Request for Payment is incorporated from the implementation phase, even if they are launched at a subsequent stage.

Why It Matters

Merchant acceptance of digital payment is a critical element in scaling usage and encourages consumers to keep value in their wallet or account in order to make essential daily purchases.

Seeing More Clearly

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Women’s Inclusion

Women are more likely to have less experience in digital payments, both as consumers and merchants, and face challenges in basic, digital, and financial literacy, thus benefiting from intuitive and thoughtfully designed experiences that consider their specific needs.

A woman purchases a necklace using mobile money in Rwanda.

Related Resources

From the Community

Helpful resources from other organizations on implementing this practice.

    Blog | CGAP

    Breaking the Cash Habit: The Urgent Need to Accelerate Digital Merchant Payments

    Thought-piece presents evidence to support enabling merchant payments

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Review other L1P practices and learn more about how to apply them to your IPS.

A woman uses mobile money to purchase fruit at a market in Rwanda.