Interswitch, Visa to drive digital payments across Africa

Interswitch, an integrated payments and transaction solutions company in Africa and Visa Inc. have announced a partnership to accelerate mobile payments adoption across the region.

The partnership will see Interswitch upgrade the digital banking applications of leading banks to include mVisa, as well as enable more merchants to accept mVisa payments.
mVisa is an innovative mobile payments solution that allows consumers to pay for goods from any type of phone by either scanning a QR code, or entering a merchant number. Payment goes directly from the consumer’s account into the merchant’s account and provides real-time notification to both parties.

Interswitch East Africa Chief Executive Officer Paul Ndichu affirms that Interswitch is the largest Visa third party processor in Africa and will work very closely with Visa in selected African markets across East and West Africa to develop a Merchant Management Platform to receive Original Credit Transactions (OCT) from Visa as well as app-based merchant enrolment solutions, which enable minimum Static QR code functionality.

Visa East Africa General Manager Sunny Walia said “mVisa is completely interoperable, meaning that the consumer and the merchant do not need to be customers of the same bank. It can also be used to enable consumers who use different mobile phones and services to interact. This brings a versatile and secure digital payments solution, powered by Visa, to consumers everywhere. Consumers will experience the same look, feel and familiarity of their banking app and have the option of making an mVisa payment in an easy-to-understand way.”