Mr Charles Kiptoo uses a cashless device to collect fares from passengers in Nairobi. Photo/FILE
By Mbugua Njihia
The beginning of July was to mark yet another
milestone, arguably a world first with the switchover of Kenya’s mass
transit systems into cashless mode.
But with the public nonchalant about the whole affair, it
points to a disturbing trend that highlights weaknesses in our
technology transfer and adoption process.
The banking sector set a migration deadline of
March 2014 that was pushed to May 2014 to move to the more secure chip
and pin technology for credit and debit cards in a bid to stem fraud.
On the broadcast front, the move from analog to
digital has also suffered its fair share of setbacks. The Court of
Appeal in December last year stopped the process for 45 days pending
determination of a dispute on February 2014 with a September 2014
timeline given thereafter.
Not accounting for the court battles between the
regulator and broadcasting houses, it has been evident that the larger
population, though aware of the process, have not warmed up as expected.
The genesis of the problem experienced across board may lie in the framing of expectations and the timelines given.
Systems that are to be adopted by millions cannot
be introduced cold turkey. They require intense consumer education and
activation akin to what was done for the constitutional reform process.
In the case of cashless transit, a good start would
have been to go cash-lite with benefits communicated clearly for all
stakeholders.
Right now, there are multiple vendors with siloed
platforms, pushing product, whose sole focus has been revenue assurance
for the matatu owners without much thought given to interoperability,
leaving the transit service consumer confused and without any fail-safe
or guarantee.
No behaviour changing benefits have been sold to
the public that would drive adoption either. For example, it should be
cheaper to pay via cashless channels.
Government as the main proponent of this industry
wide change should have provided standards of interoperability to both
drive competition from a service perspective and allow innovation of
niche feeder offerings.
The pilot could have been done smarter, too, on a
fluid and adaptive timeline, with a differentiated approach in high
potential adoption areas that have lower resistance to change versus out
of city consumer communities whose virgin interaction with the
technology shift will be through their familiar turnboy.
Demand creation is one of the best drivers of
service uptake and involves the creation of an emotional and not
technological connection to the value of a service. Government must find
the trigger to ignite consumer action.
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