More than 250,000 micro and small businesses across 11 markets in Sub-Saharan Africa will soon be able to accept in-store mobile payments through Mastercard’s Masterpass QR service... More
Kenya
Mastercard and Visa expand availability of QR payments
Visa’s mVisa QR-based mobile payment service is now live in India, Kenya and Rwanda and will soon be available in Egypt, Ghana, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Pakistan and Vietnam, the company has announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona... More
Kenyan banks roll out PesaLink real-time direct P2P mobile payments
Kenya’s new digital payments platform PesaLink, that will enable consumers to make real-time mobile person-to-person (P2P) payments from US$0.10 up to US$9,650 at any time without having to go through intermediaries, is “expected to cut the cost of transactions and transform the way consumers interact with their banks”, the Kenya Bankers Association (KBA) says... More
More than 150,000 Kenyan merchants to get mobile payments with Masterpass QR
More than 150,000 micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Kenya will be able to accept in-store mobile payments using QR code technology in 2017, using Mastercard’s Masterpass QR platform... More
Mobile marketplace offers African farmers promise of richer, cashless harvest
Thousands of small-scale farmers across East Africa will soon be using their feature phones to buy, sell and receive payments for their goods through a mobile app and SMS service developed by Mastercard... More
DigiTally project enables mobile money transfers without network coverage
A project enabling mobile money transfers to take place at the point of sale in areas of less-developed countries with poor or no mobile network coverage has been unveiled, by removing the reliance on SMS messaging, and, instead, allowing two people to conduct a payment by copying short authentication codes between their phones... More
University students test M-Pesa NFC cards
Kenyan carrier Safaricom is trialling an NFC card with university students that enables them to make payments with a tap at any contactless terminal using their M-Pesa mobile money accounts... More
Mastercard signs deal to roll out mobile payments in 33 African countries
Pan-African banking group Ecobank has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Mastercard to roll out Masterpass QR mobile payments across 33 African countries... More
mVisa launches in Kenya
Visa has launched its mVisa QR code-based mobile payment service in Kenya with Co-operative Bank, Family Bank, KCB and NIC Bank... More
Safaricom pilots M-Pesa NFC cards
Kenyan carrier Safaricom is testing a new PIN-based NFC-enabled ‘Tap-and-Go’ card for its M-Pesa mobile money service... More
Apple Pay’s global impact remains “small”
Apple Pay has “made only a small dent in the global payments market” due to technical challenges, low consumer take-up and resistance from banks, according to a report by Reuters... More
Google exits Kenyan payments venture
BebaPay, a payment card launched by Google and Equity Bank in Kenya in 2013 that let users pay for their bus fare via NFC, is to be discontinued on March 15... More
iKaaz takes mobile payments to Kenya
Bangalore-based iKaaz is to expand its NFC payments platform to Kenya... More
Safaricom reports on merchant adoption of mobile money at the point of sale
Kenyan mobile network operator Safaricom has now signed up 122,000 merchants for Lipa na M-Pesa, a service launched in June 2013 that enables Kenyan consumers to use the funds stored in their M-Pesa mobile money account to pay for goods in stores... More
Bank to give away NFC phones
Equity Bank, Kenya’s largest bank, is to provide more than 300,000 free NFC phones to retailers across the country for use as POS devices, ITWeb Africa reports... More
Safaricom to add NFC to M-Pesa?
Kenyan carrier Safaricom is to add NFC payment capabilities to its flagship M-Pesa mobile money service, according to Techmoran.”Still undergoing the tendering process, the NFC SIM cards are expected to be rolled out to its subscribers for mobile contactless payments and transactions making Safaricom the first mobile operator in the region to mass deploy SIM-based NFC for contactless transactions,” the report says... More
Google and Equity Bank launch NFC payments in Kenya
The BebaPay service is now live on buses in Nairobi and a free app enables any Android NFC phone to be used as a card reader. Shops, traders and small businesses will be able to use Google’s BebaPay in the future “to accept payments from customers, without needing expensive tills and cash registers.” More
Kenya gets Google payments
Google has introduced a contactless prepaid card in Kenya, TechMtaa reports... More
Airtel Africa to launch NFC services in fifteen African countries
Mobile network operator Airtel Africa is to launch NFC services in Kenya, Tanzania, Gabon and a further nine African countries in early 2011, its NFC technology partner Oberthur Technologies has announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today... More