ShegerPay vs ArifPay: API-First vs POS-First Payment Verification (2026)

Quick Answer: ShegerPay is an API-first non-custodial verification platform built for online businesses, SaaS, and developers integrating Ethiopian rails programmatically. ArifPay focuses on physical POS terminals for in-store retail. If you're building software, choose ShegerPay. If you're equipping a brick-and-mortar shop with a card reader, ArifPay is purpose-built for that.

The core difference

ArifPay's center of gravity is hardware: POS terminals that sit on retail counters and accept card, QR, and mobile money in person. Their API exists, but it's secondary to the in-store experience and reflects a custodial settlement model with batch payouts.

ShegerPay's center of gravity is the developer integration. We ship 12 SDKs, an MCP server for Claude and Cursor, OpenAPI specs, a public sandbox, and a demo key that works without signup. Funds settle non-custodially — straight to your existing bank account — and verification happens in under two seconds against official Ethiopian bank APIs with OCR receipt fallback.

The two products barely overlap in practice. Pick based on whether your payment flow happens on a counter or in code.

Feature comparison

When ShegerPay is the right choice

You're building a SaaS product, marketplace, e-commerce store, mobile app, or internal billing tool that needs to confirm Ethiopian payments programmatically. You want code-first onboarding with sk_test_demo, not a hardware procurement process. You want crypto and PayPal alongside Telebirr, predictable monthly pricing, and webhooks with HMAC-SHA256 signatures you can verify in any language.

When ArifPay is the right choice

You operate a physical retail location and need a certified POS terminal to take card and mobile money payments at the counter. You value hardware support, terminal warranty, and in-person acquiring more than developer ergonomics.

Migrate from ArifPay to ShegerPay

If you're moving online flows away from ArifPay's API to ShegerPay, the lift is small. Most teams keep ArifPay for in-store and use ShegerPay for the website, app, or SaaS billing layer. Swap your verification endpoint, point webhooks at ShegerPay's signed HMAC events, and remove batch reconciliation jobs since funds now arrive directly. The sk_test_demo key lets you validate the integration end-to-end before flipping traffic — usually a one-afternoon migration with no downtime.

FAQ

Can ShegerPay replace ArifPay for in-store payments? Not directly. ShegerPay is software-only. For physical card terminals, keep ArifPay or another POS vendor and use ShegerPay for online verification.

Is ShegerPay cheaper than ArifPay? For online and SaaS volume, yes — flat $9–$29/month versus per-transaction fees. For low-volume in-store, ArifPay's POS pricing is competitive.

Does ShegerPay support Telebirr? Yes, plus CBE, BOA, Awash, Dashen, eBirr (Kaafi and Coop), CBEBirr, and M-Pesa Ethiopia — 10 rails total.

Do I need a license to use ShegerPay? No. ShegerPay never holds funds, so no payment service provider license is required on your side.

Can I test ShegerPay without signing up? Yes. sk_test_demo works against the sandbox immediately, and the MCP server scaffolds integration code in Claude or Cursor.

Does ShegerPay support crypto and PayPal? Yes. USDT, BTC, ETH, SOL with 30-second auto-confirm, plus PayPal IPN verification. ArifPay supports neither.

Try ShegerPay free with sk_test_demo · Read the docs · See pricing · [email protected] · +251 998 169 242