We’re excited to announce Food &amp; Grocery on Payer. Now you can order grocery and food right out of Payer app. We’re starting with limited outlets and working to make more outlets available over the next few weeks. With Payer, you can order, pay and track your food &amp; grocery in one place.
Food &amp; Grocery is available on the latest update of Payer, once you update your app, you’ll get access to browse and order from restaurants and grocery stores.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*25nWrWM5MOemb91_wxGFiQ.jpeg"></figure>We’ve made the ordering process as simple and quick as possible for the users. Just like how you would shop from a physical store, you select the items and add to a cart. Once you’re done, select your delivery address and place the order.
The outlet will receive your order in real-time and review and accept, once the store accepts, the payment is deducted from your Payer wallet. You’ll receive push notifications for each step of the order, such as when It’s ready, out for delivery, etc.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*psFIlGvieFQg79NX"></figure>The product is still in very early stages and we would like to hear your feedback. We’re also working to make other payment methods available to make the ordering process more convenient.
Read more on <a href="https://payer.mv/food-grocery">https://payer.mv/food-grocery</a>
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<a href="https://medium.com/payer/food-grocery-is-now-available-on-payer-3212fe496ef2">Food and Grocery is now available on Payer</a> was originally published in <a href="https://medium.com/payer">Payer</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Food and Grocery is now available on Payer

<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*JYCUYHfIqZhFQDZs"></figure>With the new year and new decade in place, we decided to take some time to reflect on what we achieved in 2019, and what we’ve in the backlog for 2020.
<h4>2019 was a challenging year for Payer (with some rewards🥳)</h4>
We came up with the idea for Payer in 2016 out of necessity. Payer was born with a mission to make payments simple and hassle-free, and our mission has remained the same ever since.
Our point of convergence then was the fact that Individuals with access to the internet was <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS?end=2017&amp;locations=MV&amp;start=1960&amp;view=chart">growing at a rapid speed</a>, and ownership of smartphones and internet-enabled devices would create a vacuum to innovate and challenge the status quo.
Unfortunately, in the past few years, we were able to to make very little progress towards making payments simple and hassle-free.
In retrospect, we realise that It has always been difficult to introduce new technologies, innovation and processes that challenge the status quo. Patrick and John Collison, co-founders of Stripe (one of our inspirations) once said, the biggest challenge for them while building Stripe wasn’t building the product itself but was It was integrating payments. For them, It was like going back to the 70s and dealing with financial institutions who didn’t understand the internet and who didn’t want to see internet businesses succeed.
We’ve had similar challenges with integrating providers. A lot of institutions are still new to how internet businesses operate, hence are reluctant to shift to a more modern way of doing things. Additionally, the lack of payment regulations and policies makes it difficult for innovation to breed in the country. We are optimistic for 2020 and anticipate to see policies and regulations created to shape and breed innovations.
<h4>Highlights of 2019</h4>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*6jbl1FR7qkvruKRw"></figure>We started 2019 with the introduction of Dhiraagu Bill Payment services on Payer. Our customers can now conveniently pay for Dhiraagu mobile and internet accounts. Payments are processed in real-time and connected instantly.
Additionally, customers on Payer can also check their due bills and amount.
In January we also introduced additional Security options for our users. Our users can use the biometric security features (FaceID, TouchID) offered by their devices on Payer. For devices without biometric security, users can create a passcode.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*bEOJqPqGm6ulW5k01HccIA.jpeg"></figure>During the development of this certain feature, we interviewed our users to understand their preferences.
While some users prefer to have verification for every transaction + application, others preferred just to have a verification only when they’re opening the app.
Hence we have given the flexibility for the user to have their preferred method.
In March, we introduced Dhiraagu Pay Cash-in feature. Our users who also use Dhiraagu Pay for other services can easily cash-in to their Dhiraagu Pay wallet right out of Payer.
In April, we took Payer to the next-level by introducing Maldives’ First Digital Bank. Over 100 customers signed up on the first day itself. Unfortunately, It was just an April’s Fools Prank. We had some fun with it, especially when we received a call from Maldives Monetary Authority regarding our Digital Bank.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*lJ38h_gwxVBVIny0"></figure>In the holy month of Ramadan, we provided our users with the option to browse menus from different restaurants and book online with Payer, making the process of Iftar Bookings simple and hassle-free.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*-HNLzX93rpT7YO7Ot5bdBw.png"></figure>In August, we launched one of the best product we’ve developed so far. The option to pay and manage Medianet account right out of Payer.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*U06w2XXLJjAaGPK2"></figure>We took it to the next level with Medianet by allowing users to not just pay for the package, but upgrade their packages and activate add-ons. Additionally, users can also use the credit they have with Medianet for payments, upgrades and add-ons.
In September, we graduated from Startup School by Y Combinator. Startup School has been an intriguing learning experience process for us. We connected with several other startups in different regions tackling similar problems.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*UcYghbeGqRB2usnSJhqx7A.png"></figure>In October, we got invited to QITCOM 2019 — the largest information technology conference in Qatar due to our “reputation as an innovative startup”. This was again a fantastic experience for us to meet with technology professionals tacking the next big problems.
We also celebrated “12 Months of Hassle-free Payments” on October 23, 2019.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*EJPvxDeMCfT-jm1I"></figure>The most exciting moment of 2019 met with us just a week before the end of the year. We were awarded Startup of the Year 2019 by Maldives Business Awards.
Whilst 2019 was an exciting year, we were not able to do as much as we planned. In 2020, we plan to make up for the missed part in 2019 and to do more.
<h4>Payer in 2020</h4>
In 2020, we’re anticipating to see the foundation being laid for the next generation payment system for the country. This, we believe would involve the creation of the required policies related to digital payments, data protection and privacy. Additionally, we also believe creating a solid framework is paramount for the future, and to give the “space” required to innovate.
We count on stakeholders to work together to transform the current payment system to a more digital friendly system. This would require banks, mobile wallet providers and other payment service providers and merchants to collaborate more closely.
The rapid growth of the FinTech Industry globally is due to the collaboration between the stakeholders. Europe is currently championing the model with regulations such as PSD2 in place. UK is currently a hotbed for FinTech innovation due to the opportunities created by the introduction of Open Banking. Other countries such as <a href="https://www.pwc.com/ca/en/industries/banking-capital-markets/canadian-banks-2019.html">Canada</a> and <a href="https://www.globalgovernmentforum.com/australia-delays-launch-of-open-banking-regime/">Australia</a> are getting ready for Open Banking and to transform their payments landscape.
While we cannot get there immediately, coming together is a start. For Payer, 2020 will be about working together with more stakeholders to make payments more simple and hassle-free.
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<a href="https://medium.com/payer/payer-in-2020-looking-back-and-forward-8facce4ac866">Payer in 2020: looking back and forward</a> was originally published in <a href="https://medium.com/payer">Payer</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Payer in 2020: looking back and forward

We launched Payer more than 1 year ago, and since then over 10,000 users have registered to use Payer, and an overwhelmingly large percentage of users have retained with us.
We like to think that in the past year, we’ve done somewhat of a good job with keeping the service stable and running, except for occasional downtime of certain products. The biggest challenge for us is ensuring service reliability. Payer is a payment service aggregator which integrates with several other service providers. Once the other end of the integration does not work, the service provided on Payer is not available as well. Most of the times these things come to us by surprise, hence we’re unable to inform users in advance.
When we developed Payer, we looked into how to make the service as intuitive and user-friendly as possible, especially while making transactions online. Ideally, we don’t believe that Payer should even have a wallet, because that would cause several problems. We believe apps like Payer should be directly integrated with your Bank accounts. However, due to the Banking and infrastructure limitations in the country, creating a wallet was the only option available for us (except for cards, we don’t want to do that).
<h4>Payer Wallet</h4>
We were able to create a seamless deposit / cash-in process unlike other apps in the market. We made it as simple as possible for our users to cash-in. Everyone loved it until it reached its limitations.
If you’ve been using Payer for a while, the most frustrating thing you could come across is seeing the Deposit Failed notification. We understand your frustration, we feel it too.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/720/1*nU5I95MDPOaRqBR81Z5hAA.jpeg"></figure><h4>Why does that happen?</h4>
Even though the Deposit process looks simple, there’s a set of operations running behind the scene. Due to the limitations of Banking in the country, we’ve automated a very tedious manual process, which doesn’t always work as intended.
The process looks something like this.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/883/1*CHBk55P07I024asFaDOCqw.png"></figure>While this looks pretty simple on the paper, we run into several issues during the process.
<ul>
<li>We rely on Internet Banking, and If the service is not available, we cannot verify the transactions.</li>
<li>OTP is required for using Internet Banking, every now and then, there’s a delay in receiving the OTP. When this happens, OTP is expired by the time we attempt to log in, and the whole process fails.</li>
<li>We’ve experienced situations where customers have transferred us the money, but the transaction does not appear on our statement. We assume this is caused because of a delay in updating the statement or due to some form of cache (we don’t really know, it’s a mystery).</li>
</ul>
<h4>What can you do in these situations?</h4>
<ul>
<li>99% of the time when you retry again after a few minutes (10–15), it should work.</li>
<li>We’ve seen users continuously attempting to deposit in this situation, but that doesn’t work.</li>
<li>If you sometimes need money urgently, eg: for topup, we suggest keeping a small amount in Payer Wallet for emergency use. We know that It’s not ideal, but that’s one way to deal with it.</li>
</ul>
<h3>That all makes sense, but what’s up with the octopus?</h3>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/355/1*8EjjhYn5RR3Bh2nqAMPI9A.jpeg"><figcaption>Payer’s Manual Deposit Process</figcaption></figure>If you’ve been using Payer for a while, then chances are, you’d have already come across this Octopus who keeps asking you to attach your receipt.
This is our Manual Deposit process, or we’d like to call it, the Octopus mode.
<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/the-story-behind-twitters-fail-whale/384313/">The octopus is inspired from the whale that used to show up on Twitter</a>
What’s happening here is, at least once a week (usually Sunday night), there’s a window of time where we’re unable to verify transactions automatically.
During this period we’re unable to get an updated Bank statement until the next day, hence we have to manually go through the receipts and verify the transactions. Obviously, this is not the best and scalable way to do this, but this is the best option we’ve got so far.
We try to make these processes as fast as possible, on average we process a transaction within 2 minutes. We’ve built internal tools to make this as fast as possible.
Occasionally, you might come across the Octopus on days other than Sunday. For example, today and the past few days. We’ve to go manual mode when there are issues with our verification process. We’ve been having issues with retrieving statements from the Bank for the past few days, hence forcing us to delegate the task to our friendly Octopus.
<h3>Why are we still doing this?</h3>
We want to see a future where banking is integrated with other aspects of life. However, in order for this to happen, there needs to be a shift in banking and infrastructure for APIs and data to thrive rather than being feared for.
Countries in the EU are making the most out of open banking and data exchange with the support from the government and policymakers. Australia and Canada are getting ready for Open Banking.
We hope to see some of these being implemented in the Maldives.
<a href="https://medium.com/media/9593010a1c83b939aa605b2e8d88bec7/href">https://medium.com/media/9593010a1c83b939aa605b2e8d88bec7/href</a><img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=db55f2925e56" width="1" height="1" alt=""><hr>
<a href="https://medium.com/payer/how-payer-deposit-works-db55f2925e56">How Payer Deposit Works?</a> was originally published in <a href="https://medium.com/payer">Payer</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.