Hello Brainiac, The report is but one source of information. With any business venture you must carry out proper research to come up with a premise on which your business plan will be based on. Please note E-commerce includes payment options like mobile money, direct debit, eft, etc... not just cards. Let me answer your questions using multiple sources of information: a.) Banks A/C in Kenya as at May 2009 - 6.4M = 16% of 40M http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aWjqnCRC39w0&refer=af... Visa Enabled.. conservatively at 40% which is 2.56M cards.(Though Equity has 4M accounts - see below) MPESA A/Cs in Kenya as at January 2010 - 8M = 20% of 40M http://www.moseskemibaro.com/2010/01/16/equity-bank-partners-with-safaricom-... b.) MPESA moved monthly $300 million as at September of 2009. http://mobilepayments.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/comparing-volumes-of-mpesa-ke... If this much is being moved via MPESA... c.) How much time do you need to make a sale on an online shop? Check these stats from Opera Mini about Africa - http://www.opera.com/smw/2010/06/ "Kenya leads the top 12 countries of the region in page views per user, with each user browsing 639 pages on average each month." "The top 12 countries using Opera Mini in Africa are South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Sudan, Libya, Tanzania, Ivory Coast, Namibia, Mozambique and Mauritius." If these numbers fail to sway you then I'm afraid nothing will. I'm taking my chances and have been actively developing e-commerce solutions for my clients and myself. I'm not going to wait for Kibaki to say 'Ready,Steady Go'. FYI: http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/business/Kenyabusiness/IT-framework-needed-for-EA... -----Original Message----- From: [ Brainiac ] <arebacollins@gmail.com> Reply-to: Skunkworks Mailing List <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> To: Skunkworks Mailing List <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> Subject: Re: [Skunkworks] E-commerce in Kenya Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2010 22:02:18 +0300 hi guys, i have been digesting the report initially with sceptism given the figures i got but now that im done, i cant agree with it more, and disagree with joes assertion with regard to critical mass. Here is the raw data: average internet usage: daily -> 3.5% Weekly -> 8.5% Monthly -> 13% Ok, now thats straightforward. that means that on average, 13 percent (if youre wondering, ive done the average of the rural and urban usage) of the approximate 4 million users browse the internet once a month, 8.5 percent browse at least four times a month and only 3.5 browse every day. Internet usage by demographic: 15-17 years 10 percent. 18 - 24 years 21 percent. 25 - 34 years 19 percent. 35 - 44 years 15 percent. 45 + years 8 percent. Internet usage: here is a sample of thse polled of what they do online. entertainment / games / music 54% social networking 45% email 42 shopping 11 %. Now the questions i ask you based on the report: What proportion of the population here, is : a) banked enough to have means of transaction. b) moneyed enough to buy and sell c) online for long enough to engage in buying and selling and finally, specifically online to buy stuff. my2cnts.... On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 9:39 PM, John Maina <mwasjunior@gmail.com> wrote: Could it be that we are looking at the "critical mass" question from the wrong perspective? We have more online users than asia tigers such as Singapore, we have $3.6 Billion worth of mobile payments per year (paypal Mobile Global only has $600 million) all this money goes to purchasing goods and Services so why aren't we designing products that these users can actually use? Someone pointed me to Kalahari earlier..I agree its better than what we have in the market..but why do I have to wait 11 working days for a product? @alex mwega: For purchase of goods outside Kenya..paypal and Equity have some interesting stuff in the works. _______________________________________________ Skunkworks mailing list Skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks ------------ Skunkworks Server donations spreadsheet http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AopdHkqSqKL-dHlQVTMxU1VBdU1BSWJxdy1f... ------------ Skunkworks Rules http://my.co.ke/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=94 ------------ Other services @ http://my.co.ke -- Posted on 100% recycled electrons _______________________________________________ Skunkworks mailing list Skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks ------------ Skunkworks Server donations spreadsheet http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AopdHkqSqKL-dHlQVTMxU1VBdU1BSWJxdy1f... ------------ Skunkworks Rules http://my.co.ke/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=94 ------------ Other services @ http://my.co.ke -- Regards, Joe Murithi Njeru Linux User: #361092 SIP: joe.njeru@ekiga.net Twitter: http://twitter.com/joenjeru Blog: https://joenjeru.wordpress.com/