When Value is Greater than Money: a Micropayment System in Uganda.

The Pay-E-Safe system is a token-based car battery powered electronic micropayment system for emerging markets in East Africa. This is the story of how it was developed with different ethnic groups in Kasese, Uganda, combining methods from HCI, software development, and business modeling. We created a system that is inexpensive to implement, sensitive to the Ugandan context (e.g. low incomes, unreliable power supplies and unstable Internet connections) and provides benefits to local vendors as well as added value to users and their families. Using observations, interviews and prototype evaluations with local Ugandans we studied people's spending behaviors and then explored alternative design solutions with them. Along the way, we discovered that a micropayment system could actually add value to the user experience beyond the exchange of money for services. This case study reports on how we designed the system and the additional value it afforded users.