Duo puts final shine on app that connects buyers with sellers

Siblings duo Lorna and Jonathan Gikabu are launching a mobile application called Session Suite which enables users to view goods for sale, chat about their experiences with merchants and make payments to sellers and each other.

Their three-in-one mobile app has evolved after Lorna got into the Tony Elumelu Foundation programme in 2016 where she underwent training and sharpened her skills.

The app is unique in that rather than people buying through it as is the case with Amazon or eBay, it simply connects buyers and sellers through a social network.

“Instead of switching apps when shopping to messaging and then to paying for whatever you are buying, you can do all that on one platform,” says Lorna, 30.

This drove them to give it a social media touch, they call it “Instagramish”. The duo targets users between 15 and 45 years.

Through the app, users can chat about their experiences with a product.

“Once I like a shoe or a handbag somewhere, I can share it with my friends through the experiences timeline,” says Lorna. Apart from connecting buyers and sellers, the site also has a feature called WiPay which enables users to transfer money across banks, settle bills and buy goods.

“As opposed to having every bank with their own app on your phone, we front the request then the customer confirms that it’s actually them who are doing the transaction and then the bank authenticates the customer directly,” says Jonathan, 26, who studied microprocessor technology.

While Lorna, the brain behind the buyer-seller tool of the mobile app, has worked extensively in businesses such as selling clothes and Uber, her brother ventured into developing digital payment solutions.

In fact, he has won awards including Equity Innovators and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation competition — experiences which he says have prepared him to develop this payments tool in the app. WiPay will tackle dormancy as people who have bank accounts they no longer use can once again access services virtually.

“We try to make it fancy for the cluster of people that we are targeting. For instance, we are beaming merchant IDs via WiFi, so in the app I don’t need to go somewhere or read some numbers somewhere to pay,” says Jonathan.

READ: Kenya needs policy for innovation to become enterprise

“When I’m seated here, I’m able to see all the beacons that are in range just the same way you can scan and see the WiFis that you can connect with. So if you are at Java or Mocha you can see them on your phone. In the background, the beacon is linked to an account or pay bill number,” he adds.

Their greatest challenge has been unwillingness of financial institutions to integrate Session Suite as an agent. “Safaricom has been the most cooperative because their APIs are market-ready and they actually mean it,” says Jonathan.

The buyer-seller link and messaging part of the app is complete. The siblings hope to integrate a few more financial institutions, and then invite merchants and users for testing before rolling out the app by December.