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In mPayment race in Africa, Visa launches mobile payment in Kenya

13 Sep 2016, 04:02 pm
Financial Nigeria
In mPayment race in Africa, Visa launches mobile payment in Kenya

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With the launch of its new app in Kenya, Visa is set to compete directly with Safaricom, the country’s largest telecoms firm, which owns the widely used mPesa mobile app.


Visa Inc., the world’s largest payments company, has launched a mobile payments application to enable cashless transactions in Kenya, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

The application, which is called mVisa app, will allow Kenyan users with smartphones to make payments by scanning a unique merchant quick response (QR) code. About 1,500 merchants have already signed up to mVisa app.

Visa’s global rival, MasterCard, last week announced that it has tied up with the pan African banking group, Ecobank, to launch mobile-driven, person-to-merchant payment service in Nigeria. In line with the Cashless Policy of Central Bank of Nigeria, Nigerian banks have deployed mobile banking apps. On September 9th, Diamond Bank announced it has won the BusinessDay award for best mobile banking solution.

With the launch of its new app in Kenya, Visa is set to compete directly with Safaricom, the country’s largest telecoms firm, which owns the widely used mPesa mobile app. Last year, Safaricom facilitated mobile transactions valued at 5.29 trillion shillings ($52.3 billion), with about 50,000 merchants and companies in its payments network.

“We are very proud that it is inter-operable and not dependent on a bank and not dependent on a mobile operator. It democratizes payments,” said Uttam Nayak, Visa Inc.’s Emerging Markets Senior Vice President.

The mVisa app will initially facilitate transactions for customers with accounts in four banks, including KCB Group and Co-operative Bank of Kenya. The banks will also introduce the application in other East African countries where they have subsidiaries.

According to Visa’s head for sub-Saharan Africa, Andrew Torre, the company is launching the mVisa app mainly because it has failed to penetrate the African merchant base with its traditional card payment system. The company is currently in talks to launch the mVisa app in Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Nigeria this year, he said.

“One of the reasons is we haven’t had as many cards as we’d like, the other reason is we haven’t been able to engage the hundreds millions of merchants where people shop,” Torre said.

Visa launched the mVisa app in India last year in partnership with seven banks, including the State Bank of India, the country’s largest bank. About 30,000 merchants have already signed up in that country, which has over 600 million bank accounts and a population of 1 billion people.


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