Why your SaaS pricing does not work in Kisumu (1/15)

1/ Every month a founder emails me: "we launched in Kenya, the traffic is great, nobody pays". Then I open the pricing page. $29 a month, card only, 20% off if you pay annually. Let me explain why that page is a wall.

2/ Start with the card. Most of your customers in Kisumu do not have a credit card. Many have a debit card that does not work online, or works until the bank's fraud system sees a foreign merchant and blocks it.

3/ What they have is M-Pesa. If your checkout cannot take mobile money, you have filtered out most of the market before anyone sees your product.

4/ Price in shillings. A price in dollars says "this is not for you". It also says "this price changes every month", because the exchange rate does.

5/ And keep the number round. KES 1,500 reads like a price. KES 1,487.63 from a currency conversion reads like a bug.

6/ Think in weeks, not years. Many small businesses here earn daily and plan weekly. Data and airtime are often bought as daily or weekly bundles. A weekly plan feels natural. An annual plan feels like a loan you are giving a stranger.

7/ Recurring billing is harder. Cards renew quietly in the background. Mobile money mostly does not, at least not the way your billing system expects. Plan for a payment prompt or a reminder every cycle.

8/ So: a reminder by SMS or WhatsApp the day before, a pay link that opens the payment prompt, and a few days of grace before you lock anyone out. Locking a shop out of its invoices on a Friday is how you lose it forever.

9/ Price per value, not per seat. A shop where three people share one phone will not pay for three seats. They will share one login and you will hate it. Price by invoices, orders or locations instead.

10/ Taxes. Kenya charges VAT on digital services sold by foreign companies. If you do it right, your $29 costs the customer $29 plus 16%. Show the final number.

11/ Now the scary part: purchasing power pricing. Founders love it in theory, then panic that people in Berlin will use a VPN to "move" to Nairobi and pay less.

12/ A simple fix that works: tie the local price to the local payment method. The shilling price is only available if you pay with M-Pesa. Anyone can see it. Very few people in Berlin have an M-Pesa wallet.

13/ Free tiers. A generous free tier in a market with few cards often means 100% free users forever. Prefer a cheap paid tier with a short trial.

14/ Support in local hours, ideally in the local language. A WhatsApp number answered during Nairobi working hours closes more deals than any discount.

15/ If you remember one thing: your pricing page is a product for a specific person. Write it for the person in Kisumu, not for the investor in San Francisco. Karibu Kisumu. The fish is excellent.