Mastercard and MTN FinTech Group have signed a partnership agreement covering a number of markets to start a new era of cooperation aimed at connecting millions of people and small businesses across the African continent with advanced digital tools and solutions to make secure payments using mobile phone, and take advantage of the wide benefits offered by the cashless digital economy, the statement sent on March 3 said.
The partnership aims to leverage Mastercard’s technologies and capabilities to support MTN’s ambitions to become Africa’s largest fintech platform for merchants and individual users.
This follows the agreement that Mastercard signed with MTN earlier this month, under which Mastercard invests in a minority stake in MTN FinTech Group, the digital financial services arm of Africa’s largest mobile network operator،
Considering MTN’s 290 million subscribers and 60 million monthly active wallets in the mobile money digital wallet (MoMo), this agreement will cover 13 countries on the African continent including Benin, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, eSwatini, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Republic of Guinea, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia.
Commenting on this, Amna Ajmal, executive vice president, Market Development, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa at Mastercard, said: “Our innovation strategy is based on collaboration with various players in the financial services sector. We are proud of this partnership that will allow millions of people in Africa to benefit from the many advantages of digital commerce, and the various benefits that mobile money transfer solutions provide to small and medium-sized businesses such as convenient business operations, accepting payments more widely, being able to access credit at affordable prices, and using secure digital tools and solutions that enable these companies to expand and grow their business,”he added.
The African continent is home to more than 1.3 billion people, of whom only 43% deal with banks, while more than 90% of all payments and transactions are made using cash. Also, 45% of the total population has mobile financial accounts.
Over the past five years, Mastercard and MTN have collaborated to support several mobile money management programs across Africa, helping people make payments using global platforms, thereby introducing more people to the mainstream financial services ecosystem.
Serin deoum, CEO of MTN FinTech Group, said: “Our Shared Vision and goals to facilitate access and benefit from financial services to achieve financial inclusion and prosperity for people had the greatest impact in concluding this distinctive partnership . We look forward to working with Mastercard as a committed partner in enabling more people and companies to benefit from the best financial solutions and services such as applications, outstanding user experiences, secure transactions and transfers, and expanded acceptance of digital financial services,”he added.
This cooperation will contribute to the development of the local digital payments infrastructure, as well as support the potential expansion of transactions in the future, and advance the prospects for financial inclusion by enabling greater access to financial assets and services.
Each of the “mobile money” digital wallets will be provided with a virtual Mastercard and a traditional one, which will enable users to access more than 100 million sites that accept the use of these cards globally, which allows MTN to achieve further expansion internationally.
Mastercard’s cybersecurity solutions help protect individuals and businesses from fraud and other threats, which enhances their trust and support for the solutions and services that this partnership will provide.
The agreement will allow SMEs to have access to payment acceptance solutions such as Mastercard’S SME-in-a-Box, a low-cost payment solution that enables small business owners to move their business to the internet and accept purchases using a combination of digital payments.
SME owners can now access solutions that enable them to design special interfaces for e-commerce, with support for QR response code and Tapلول Phone solutions, and accept digital cards, in order to improve the customer experience, reduce business costs, and open new horizons for growth and innovation.
Through this partnership, users will benefit from wider access to mobile money transfer services, whether for internal money transfers or cross-border transfers on the African continent. The demand for international money transfer services has grown by more than USD 2 billion in daily transactions, equivalent to more than 40% of the GDP of sub-Saharan Africa.
International money transfers using mobile wallets also increased by 65% year-on-year in 2020 to reach about one billion US dollars, with no signs of slowing down this trend.
Mastercard is committed to working with many telecom service providers across the African continent and globally to achieve the principle of financial inclusion for all, and the company has pledged to include one billion people and 50 million small and micro enterprises in the digital economy by 2025.
