CEO – Shane Senyong
SchoolPal; an education management system is committed to using technology to transform education and general school life. This is according to its founder and CEO – Shane Senyonga.
“At SchoolPal, we deliver Education management solutions from a dashboard we give to schools and an APP that parents use to access school details for their children. We also have an APP specifically for teachers. Our core solutions are communication, performance analytics and payments,” Senyonga said.
He explained that for payments, SchoolPal supports school fees payments, pocket money and payment of other school related activities as such trips, plus items like books and new uniforms among others.
“The schools only have to set the school fees on the system. When the parents open the APP, they can pay the school fees and money deducted of their mobile money and bank payment cards such as Visa or Mastercard. Those off the APP can also pay through the USSD and get their receipts. At any point, the platform shows you your child’s school fees balance and sends reminders about the same. Parents can also pay for things like sweaters, after which the school gets the notification and gives the sweater to the pupil,” Senyonga noted.
He added: “We are also digitizing pocket money. We have a card we give to boarding school pupils. Through our APP, the parents can load pocket money on the card and the pupil will receive and use it. The parents are able to monitor how much their children are spending and can continuously top up for them.”
Senyonga noted that SchoolPal services are accessible after ‘schools registering on the platform and onboarding their students and their parents’.
“We have been building since platform 2022 but we entered the market this year. Our numbers are not too high but they are promising. We have several schools that have been on trial this term and will start using the platform for managing their payments in third term, so it is very promising,” he concluded.
SchoolPal has featured on Day 32 of the annual 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative Season 5.
Run under HiPipo’s Include Everyone program that also encompasses other initiatives such as FinTech Landscape Exhibition, Women in FinTech Hackathon, Summit & Incubator, and the Digital and Financial Inclusion Summit and Digital Impact Awards Africa; the #40Days40FinTechs platform aptly provides a setting for the various players and stakeholders involved in digital and financial technology to exhibit their products and services. It also gives players a platform to share their ideas on how the unserved and underserved by the present financial systems can be brought into the fold.
With over 150 participants in the last four years, #40Days40FinTechs continues to be the world’s premier showcase event for innovations that are enabling underserved populations to join the digital economy space. We know that this can only get better owing to the inspiration and collaboration of our partners; Level One Project, Mojaloop Foundation, INFITX, Cyberplc Academy, Ideation Corner, and Crosslake Technologies. Most importantly, the initiative owes its continued success to the generous support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.