The world is running hot on the topic of digital payment, cashless payment, digital currencies lime bitcoins and all though bitcoin being banned in places. The point here is that the people are just ditching the trend of using hard cash and replacing them with digital form, more secure and convenient. The digital payment is the next big thing in the economic field, by getting rid of cash, we are dealing with so much of solutions to our insecurity related to the handling and keeping records of the income and tax and all. And it is so much convenient as well to pay for something right from the card or from your mobile device.
How many times you have actually forgot your wallet at home and spent a day like broke like hell? Well I have done it couple of times but mobile wallet came to the rescue. It’s so much easier as you just need to load your wallet with fund and you are good to go. You can pay with your wallet at most of the places given your locality and its development. Payment gateway like PayPal, has been there for long time enough to motivate more people to use and make use of digital payment and discourage the use of hard cash.
Online Payment History in Nepal
The history of banking in Nepal took a very big leap with implementation of mobile and internet banking. This technological advancement encouraged people to utilize their banking system and habit to its fullest. Kumari bank is the first bank to initiate internet banking in Nepal as in 2002. It was soon accompanied by Laxmi Bank by its mobile (SMS) banking in 2004. Internet now being accessible at nearly every nooks and corner of Nepal, the internet banking has seen an adequate increase in usage. Hard cash at upper levels with larger amounts were replaced with the bank issued cheque.
Recently, the trend has been climbing not only stairs but taking elevator to climb with the availability of credit/debit cards, e-banking, online banking etc. Walking around with huge sum of money has been the safest as you nearly don’t have to carry them literally as online banking takes care of it. You feel safer, more secured and mostly free from hassle of carrying the cash everywhere around.
Though the bank is to take all the credits regarding the introduction of online banking in Nepal, it actually was “Fonepay” by F1 Soft International which gave new dimension to the whole online payment gateway game in early 2000s. It provided not only the SMS banking feature, but people could also receive remittance through mobile phones. It was then followed by “HelloPaisa” founded in year 2009 to help bank clients pay bills, send/receive money within Nepal, receive money from abroad, and purchasing airtime from mobile phones of through merchants.
The growing trend for the payment gateway soon knocked on Nepal’s door asking for the advancement in the technology, it was then F1 Soft International introduced eSewa to Nepali economy. With eSewa, customers were not bound with the barrier of having a particular bank to benefit from the usage. It soon became the most talked thing in Nepali market and still is kicking hard. With eSewa, gone were those days when you actually needed to be in huge queue to pay your bills, with offices being all over which was seriously a pain. eSewa enabled the users to pay utility bills right from their finger tips all at one place. It has partnered with many banks here in Nepal and has many numbers if registered vendors all over which makes the task on step further in terms of ease.
Other similar digital wallet service providers like Khalti has not been far behind eSewa in terms of functionality and providing services. Khalti meaning “pocket” in English acts as its name suggests, you just need to load it up and can spend from the pocket later on. Khalti has been providing merchant payment, fund transfer, utility payment etc. to its happy customers. Utilizing the benefits of banking has not been this easy and fun as service providers like eSewa and Khalti has been providing.
How Online Payment System works?
Online payment is a process of transaction of money electronically or with involving the actual money. This is generally made with the help of internet service. The buying and selling of goods are known as trade and the exchange of money for trade is known as transaction. The transaction part in the trade is done electronically using the online payment services. They generally take place between the customer and merchant bank with the involvement of third party service provider known as payment gateway.
For the online payment to happen, the merchant and customers have to have an account for the online payment. The steps involving the online payment is as follows:
- Customer submits the payment information to the merchant about the amount to be paid.
- The merchant then submits the payment information to the online payment gateway.
- The online payment gateway submits the payment information to the payment processor.
- The payment processor authorizes the payment and responds to the payment gateway.
- The gateway responds back to the merchant.
- The merchant responds to the customer.
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If this wasn’t good enough, lets take an example of David. David is a smart guy with knowledge of the online payment system, he heads to a store in his locality stating “online payment received”. He enters the store, buys his stuffs and heads to the counter for making payment. The merchant gives him the number $$$ to be paid. David makes his payment through the service provider received by the merchant. Merchant hands him the bill and he’s going home after that. It feels like this is hell lot of easy task but the mechanism involved is tricky. The payment David made, was either from his mobile wallet or bank. David requests the payment money, through say bank to the merchant bank. He provides the payment information to the merchant, merchant provides the same information to the payment gateway which was the moderator of this process. The payment gateway provides the information to the payment processor, in this case merchant bank. The payment processor verifies the information and the information flows back the sae line to the customer. But this process isn’t slow, it is fast enough that the customer doesn’t have to stay there waiting for the payment to be approved. Hence, the payment is successfully made without any hassle of keeping the actual hard cash with you. Merchant should follow the security requirements for the safe transaction. The transfer needs to be done over the secure encrypted connection.
Online Payment System Provider in Nepal
Online payment has been a hot trend in the Nepali market given its ease of access and hassle-free processing of payments. There are few we would discuss and hope for more and more service providers to emerge making payment system more efficient and easier. Two of such payment system providers are eSewa and Khalti.
eSewa
eSewa is the very first payment gateway of Nepal, developed by F1 Soft International in Nepal. It was developed in 2009 and gained popularity recently with the increasing trend of use of online payment system worldwide. It was started for providing online payment services through a mobile application and web services. eSewa has provided services like utility bill payment (electricity bill, drinking water bill, telephone bills, etc), mobile top-up (mobile recharge), internet bill payment, EMI payment, movies, airlines and bus ticket booking, school fees payment, credit card bills payment, etc.
F1 Soft International is one of the most renowned mobile application developer company for banks in Nepal. Most of the banking application that are used by the customers for their respective banks is developed by the F1 Soft company. More than 90% of the financial institutions of Nepal have implemented services provided by F1 Soft company which includes SMS banking, Mobile banking and internet banking.
eSewa is licensed by Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) as a legal payment service provider. Hence, it is one of the most trusted payment service providers by the customers as well. Merchants, service providers, and retail outlets can receive payments for goods and services in their wallet instantly with the use of eSewa as payment means.
Services Offered by eSewa
Following is the service it provides to the users:
- Fund transfer: With this service provided by eSewa, send and receive money to and from other eSewa users.
- School Fee Payment: eSewa has partnered with a few schools and Montessori which accept the payment through eSewa providing the ease of paying from home.
- Buying cinema tickets: You can buy movie tickets for major Multiplexes online via eSewa.
- Buying plane tickets: Option for buying tickets through partnered airlines company gives you accessibility of booking tickets from home.
- Utility bill payment: Many government offices like NEA and Khanepani has been providing ease to pay the utility bills from home.
- Recharge, Top-ups and cash back: it has been providing online recharge and top-ups for NTC, Ncell and smart cell, DishHome, ISP payments, and others with cash back offered in some transactions as a treat for using the services.
- Send/Receive Remittance: it has collaborated with Western Union as exclusive digital remittance partner proving as a platform for sending and receiving the remittance.
- Credit card payment: e-Sewa accepts credit card payments for banks like Nabil Bank, Global IME Bank, NMB Bank, Prabhu Bank, Laxmi Bank, Citizens Bank, NIC Asia Bank etc.
- eSewa Partner banks:
| Ace Development Bank Limited | Bank of Kathmandu Lumbini | Citizens Bank International | Everest Bank |
| Excel Development Bank | Gandaki development Bank | Garima Bikas Bank | Global IME Bank |
| Gurkhas Finance | Janata Bank | Jyoti Bikas Bank | Kailash Bikas Bank |
| Kamana Bikas Bank | Kanchan Development Bank | Kumari Bank | Laxmi Bank |
| Machhapuchchhre Bank | Mahalaxmi Bikas Bank | Manaslu Bikas Bank | Mega Bank Limited |
| Mission Development Bank | Muktinath Bikas Bank | Nabil Bank | NCC Bank |
| Nepal Bangladesh Bank | NIC Asia | OM Development Bank | Prabhu Bank |
| Prime Commercial Bank | Purnima Bikas Bank | Rastra Banijya Bank | Reliable development Bank |
| Sajha Bikas Bank | Sanima Bank | Sewa Bikas Bank | Shangrila Development Bank |
| Shine Resunga Development Bank | Siddhartha Development Bank | Sunrise Bank | Tinau Bikas Bank |
| Tourism Development Bank | Tribeni Bikas Bank | United Finance | Yeti Development Bank |
More Banks added in the present context. See All Here: https://blog.esewa.com.np/banks/
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- Online Purchase: Many online shopping places partnered with eSewa provide you the opportunity of paying through eSewa for the purchases made similar to how we would do with credit or debit card.
Create eSewa Account
- Visit https://esewa.com.np on the browser of your choice.
- Click on Register on top right corner.
- You will encounter a new page, fill in the details.
- When you enter your mobile number, you will receive a confirmation message and then a message on your phone with OTP.
- On entering the OTP in the form with strong password, you will receive new message with your MPIN.
- MPIN is the important code that you will require to enter every time you make a transaction.
- With recent change in rules, you have to fill a KYC form given in the application itself with your details and get verified.
- After verification, you can load your eSewa wallet from nearest vendor or your bank and enjoy the services provided by the eSewa.
Khalti
Khalti is one stop solution for the payment gateway that provides services including mobile recharge, bill payment, fund transfer and many more. It is operated and owned by Sparrow Pay Pvt. Ltd, with its parent company being Janaki Technology. It was introduced in January 26, 2017. Khalti is not just a digital wallet, it’s an entire payment ecosystem which provides services like scan to pay to person to third party merchants.
Khalti is named after the traditional Nepali word which means “pocket” in English, giving us the clear idea about what the developers intended to do with it. The team has come up with an optimistic faith in taking the Khalti payment system to the global market.
The hard-cash still holds major part of payment system in all over Nepal and digital payments though having already occupied a fair amount place in transaction system all around the world, it is still needs nurturing in Nepal. Many more payment gateway and merchants need to get their feet in the digital payment thing to fully eliminate the hard-cash use in Nepali market.
The advantages of eliminating the hard-cash has positive benefits to the user and the government as any hidden costs will be eliminated, there will be proper bills provided for even smaller transactions, black money can be minimized and many more other benefits are present like hassle free payment system and all.
Services provided by Khalti
Khalti being young and developing payment system in Nepal compared what eSewa has to offer, there are services offered that might not be as competitive but is definitely worth mentioning. No one knows what future holds, but we definitely need to keep trying to achieve what we always dreamed of. This is exactly what Sparrow Pay Pvt. Ltd. thinks of about Khalti. Some of the services provided by Khalti are given below.
- Electricity Bill: You can pay your electricity bill right from your mobile, just open Khalti app, select electricity payment, select your counter and enter the customer number. That’s it, you just paid you electricity bill in matters of seconds.
- DTH and ISP: You can recharge your DTH connection and pay you ISP bill right from the Khalti app.
- Mobile Balance Top-Up: You can recharge your mobile phone with the fund you have in your Khalti wallet, you will also get an attractive cash back on certain transactions.
- Movie Ticketing: Buying a movie ticket staying in queue is such an old thing with Khalti app in phone, you can buy a ticket to your favourite movie in number partnered multiplexes.
- Airline ticketing: While buying an airline ticket, you don’t have to think twice now, just open the app and buy a ticket for where you want to go.
- Water bill: Just like the electricity bill, you can pay water bill of few selected counter in the app.
Khalti Fund Transfer
Khalti provides relish and instant fund transfer through Khalti wallet.
- Bank to Wallet: you can load your wallet from the partnered banks of Khalti payment system.
- Wallet to Wallet: Requesting and sending funds from one khalti user to another is fun thing to do. It is very easy and fast also.
- Wallet to Bank: Suppose you have been sent money to your Khalti wallet and you want it in your Bank account, guess what, you can transfer your wallet funds to your bank account as well.
- KIOSKS to Wallet: There are ATM like machines over many places where you can load funds from in your wallet.
Khalti Partner Banks
The bank is the most supporting part of the payment system. As many number of banks support your service, the more number of user you can attract to use your system.
| Bank Of Kathmandu | Civil Bank | Everest Bank Limited | Garima Bikas Bank |
| Global IME | Kumari Bank | Machhapuchchhre bank | Mega Bank |
| Muktinath Bank | NIC Asia | NMB | Nepal Investment Bank Limited |
| Prabhu bank | Central Finance | Deva Bikas Bank | Excel Development Bank |
| Gandaki Bikash Bank | Gurkhas Finance | Himalayan Bank | ICFC bittiya sansthan |
| Jebil’s Finance | Kailash Bikash Bank | Kanchan Development Bank | Karnali Development Bank |
| Lalitpur Finance | Laxmi Bank | Manjushree Finance | Nabil Bank |
| Nepal Bank | Nepal Community Dev Bank | Om Development Bank | Pokhara Finance |
| Purnima Bikash Bank | Reliance Finance | Srijana Finance | Standard Chartered |
| Sunrise Bank | Century Bank |
More Banks added in the present context. See All Here: https://blog.khalti.com/tips/introducing-our-new-service-khalti-bank-direct/
Create Khalti Account
The account for the Khalti can be created via web and mobile app.
Via web
- Visit Khalti.com on browser of your choice
- Enter your details like Name, mobile number, email address and a password on the sign up form at the top-right corner of the page
- Click on ‘Join’
- You will get a verification code on the mobile number you entered
- Enter the verification code
- Once you enter the verification code, click on ‘Verify’
- Your account will be created
Via app
- Launch your Khalti app
- Tap on ‘LET’S GET STARTED’
- Enter your Name, mobile number, email address and a password on the sign-up form
- Tap on ‘SIGN UP’
- You will get a verification code on the mobile number you entered
- Enter the verification code
- Once you enter the verification code, click on ‘Verify’
- Your account will be created
eSewa and Khalti comparison | eSewa vs Khalti
Let’s make a quick comparison between these payment service providers and see what the verdicts have to say.
| System | eSewa | Khalti |
| Started | 2009 | 2017 |
| Offered by | F1 Soft International | Sparrow Pay Pvt. Ltd |
| Services | Online payment within Nepal
Utilities Payments -Electricity Bill -Internet Bill -Electricity/Water -Mobile Top Up -Credit Card Bill -School/College Fees -Entertainment -Dishhome -Merchants, service providers and retail outlets can Send/receive payments |
Online payment within Nepal
Utilities Payments -Electricity Bill -Internet Bill -Electricity/Water -Mobile Top Up -Credit Card Bill -School/College Fees -Entertainment -Dishhome |
| Application | iOS/Android | iOS/Android |
| Registration | Free | Free |
| Associate banks | 45+ | 40+ |
| Security | Secure | Secure |
| Global and Nepal Alexa Ranking | Global – 48,863
Nepal – 34 (Rank may change) |
Global – 283,661
Nepal – 219 (Rank may change) |
| Refer and Earn | No | Yes |
| App Downloads | 500,000+ | 100,000+ |
| App Rank(finance) | #1 | #3 |
| Scan and Pay | No | Yes |
| Licensed by NRB | Yes | No |
Final Verdict
Just by looking at few of the differences, you can see that there are advantages in both the systems. Keeping in mind in usability and convenience, lets see some of the differences.
User Trust
People will always go after the most trusted ones. In terms of user trust, eSewa is ahead of Khalti. Huge market, larget number of merchants and associated banksis what favours eSewa and the fact that it is licensed by NRB.
User Interface
User interface is something that can change the way user will interact with the system. Khalti has minimalistic design and eSewa has recently updated how it looks. Because of heavy UI, khalti occupies more space than eSewa.
Security
Both the eSewa and khalti is secured by 128-bit VeriSign SSL Certificate also Khalti has SSL Certificate.
User Votes
On creating polls, eSewa is the system that is chosen by users.
Now the question arises, which would you prefer? Well, it comes down to the personal preferences. The only meaningful difference is that eSewa is a settled and old but Khalti is new and still developing. Hence, for me, eSewaa works like a charm.
Author: Rabindra Ghemosu
Business Development Officer, Business Analyst (Highly skilled in IT Section)