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Interconnection of Two Different Payment Systems

Bachelor's thesis presentation

Time: Tue 2019-06-25 16.00

Location: Seminar room Grimeton at COM, Electrum, elevator B, 4th floor, Isafjordsgatan 22, Kista

Participating: Kevin Ammouri and Daniel Kangyoun Cho

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Mobile money, a means of transferring payments via mobile devices, has become increasingly popular. The demand for convenient financial products or services is a crucial factor in why innovative developers want to incorporate mobile money into existing financial products/services. The goal is to provide convenient financial services that enable customers to quickly send and receive money between two mobile payment platforms.

The Swedish blockchain company, Centiglobe, is searching for a system whereby payments can be made conveniently between two mobile payment platforms, specifically Alipay and M PESA. This thesis sought to develop such a system by utilizing the application programming interfaces (APIs) (provided by Alipay and M PESA) coupled with Centiglobe’s blockchain to facilitate payments between an Alipay user and an M PESA user.

Solving this problem began with an initial literature study of previous work related to this topic and reading the extensive API documentation provided by Alipay and Daraja Safaricom (the developers of M PESA). Next, a flowchart was created and used as a guide throughout the development of the system. Testing the system entailed integration testing. The performance of the system was determined by measuring the execution time to make a cross system payment.

A one-way transfer system was developed, as Alipay users can make a payment to M PESA users but not the reverse. The results of the integration testing shows that the system is a feasible solution. The execution time of a payment shows that it is relatively quick (~9.4 seconds); thus the performance is adequate.

The conclusion is that this system is a viable solution for incorporating Alipay and M PESA as mobile payment services. Moreover, the system partially facilitates person-to-person payments between them – subject to the limitations of the Alipay API. In addition, this system provides a foundation for other inter-platform mobile payment solutions.

Keywords: Alipay, M-PESA, API, Integration, Blockchain