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For the first time in Egypt, MasterCard Worldwide has teamed up with Fawry, the nationwide Electronic Bill Payment and Presentment (EBPP) network, to launch MasterCard Bill Pay services to enable MasterCard cardholders to use their cards for bill payments and mobile top-up via Fawry’s retail network. MasterCard cardholders can now settle their Internet, mobile and fixed line bills and also utilize the top-up payment services through Fawry-MasterCard enabled retail locations across Egypt.

For the first time in Egypt, MasterCard Worldwide has teamed up with Fawry, the nationwide Electronic Bill Payment and Presentment (EBPP) network, to launch MasterCard Bill Pay services to enable MasterCard cardholders to use their cards for bill payments and mobile top-up via Fawry’s retail network. MasterCard cardholders can now settle their Internet, mobile and fixed line bills and also utilize the top-up payment services through Fawry-MasterCard enabled retail locations across Egypt.

For the first time in Egypt, MasterCard Worldwide has teamed up with Fawry, the nationwide Electronic Bill Payment and Presentment (EBPP) network, to launch MasterCard Bill Pay services to enable MasterCard cardholders to use their cards for bill payments and mobile top-up via Fawry’s retail network. MasterCard cardholders can now settle their Internet, mobile and fixed line bills and also utilize the top-up payment services through Fawry-MasterCard enabled retail locations across Egypt.

The Mastercard Foundation Fund for Rural Prosperity (FRP) is investing $2.8 million in three companies from Burundi, Malawi, and Uganda to support projects that expand financial inclusion in rural Africa.

The three companies, Prothem Usine, Pula Advisors, and Enviu BV, were selected from among 195 firms that submitted applications to the third phase of the Fund’s 2017/2018 rolling competition. This competition is an effort to find and support scalable financial products and services for rural areas of Africa.

Hellomarket will be the platform used for local transactions, enabling buyers to order, deliver and pay for goods through electronic banking services. Belcash has signed an agreement with DHL Express, a Germany company, for logistics services.

For buyers abroad, Belcash introduced Helloshop, a platform that allows domestic products to be ordered through the firm’s portal and the payment to be processed through Mastercard Payment Gateway Services.

“This will make foreign currency flow through the proper channels to local banks,” said Zewdu Assefa, deputy CEO of Belcash Ethiopia. “The seller receives the Birr equivalent of the amount earned in foreign currency.”

“With Masterpass, we’re enabling consumers to make secure and simple everyday payments wherever they are and from any connected device, without needing to physically carry their bank cards with them,” says Mark Elliott, Division President, Mastercard, South Africa. “Thanks to our collaboration with SnapScan, we are pleased to offer consumers even more places to pay using Masterpass, which is now the most widely accepted digital wallet in South Africa.”Since its launch in 2013, SnapScan has grown its acceptance exponentially, especially among small businesses that traditionally did not have access to traditional Point of Sale devices and relied on cash payments. It makes accepting digital card payments cheap and easy, with merchants simply needing to display a QR code at the till, online or on a bill.“Given SnapScan’s extensive acceptance footprint, the ability to offer merchants a single QR code, which will accept payment from multiple mobile wallet solutions such as Masterpass, is the driving force behind creating interoperability,” says Lincoln Mali, head of group card and payments at Standard Bank. “We believe that interoperability between digital payments platforms is one of the keys to driving digital payments usage and acceptance in South Africa.”

Each Masterpass transaction is classified as an Authenticated Mobile Transaction by South African banks, ensuring that consumers enjoy the highest protection from fraudsters.

Zeepay, a fast-growing financial technology (fintech) company into Mobile Financial Services across Africa, has announced its partnership with Transfast, a Mastercard company and a leading cross-border payments service provider.

To minimise risk, shops where the services are available buy credit in advance from Fawry before they collect any money from the public, earning a cut from the fees.

“Acceptance is critical to us and we have been keen to develop solutions to expand the acceptance footprint,” he says. “The alliance with Fawry helps this by adding segments that were not accessible before. It is a typical fit with our strategy for penetrating the unbanked segment.”

Customers, when purchasing, simply need to scan a QR (quick response) code in store using their phones. And the customer can use any MasterCard or Visa card to sign up. Ehlers added: “We tried to design a product which allowed absolutely everybody to be part of the formal side of the economy.”

In an interview with How we made it in Africa, Ehlers explained: “A sizable part of why we built the product the way we did really relates to how the economy of South Africa functions. So to give one example, we built SnapScan so the merchant selling the products doesn’t need any special hardware at all. No point of sales system is required.” Merchants who don’t have bank accounts can redeem payments at any Standard Bank ATM or selected supermarkets.

SnapScan’s partnership with Standard Bank has allowed the company to grow faster. But Ehlers and his team are still required to adapt to the differences between the corporate and start-up worlds. He explained: “A start-up can quickly make a decision and then two hours later start implementing, whereas in a large corporation there is a process, things move a lot slower. Politics are involved and different people – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, just the reality.”

ezoMoney provides a digital solution to informal savings schemes, allowing savings groups and individuals via their digital savings platform. BezoMoney has a wallet for each of the individuals who save with them. The digital savings platform provides access to loans and helps those saving with them create a comprehensive savings history to ensure transparency.  Bezo Money also provides investments, investment payment options, insurance, group purchase, and pensions services.

Undoubtedly, Ghana’s drive towards a cashless economy cannot be achieved without Financial Technology — FinTech. We’ve been pushed to an era where most people use mobile money services in the country, and have seen the birth of FinTech companies who render financial services and also provide foreign remittance services from countries across the world.

Consumers can download the MasterPass app from their app store, register, and load their credit, debit or cheque cards from any bank into the digital wallet. To pay, Masterpass users simply need to scan a QR code, or SnapCode, displayed at point of sale or online at a wide range of SnapScan merchants including coffee shops, professionals like doctors and market vendors. They then enter the payment amount into their Masterpass app and confirm the transaction with their ATM pin code or a one-time pin code sent to their mobile phones.

ZEEPAY, a wholly Ghanaian owned mobile financial services company focused on providing integrated mobile payments services with mobile wallets has announced that the company has partnered with Visa to allow Africans in the diaspora to directly send money onto Visa debit and prepaid cards in Ghana.

Digital financeAs the global economy recovers from COVID-19, one particular area of focus for FinTech is financial inclusion. According to the World Bank, there are currently around 1.7 billion unbanked individuals worldwide, and FinTechs will be central to efforts to integrate these people into the global banking system.Doing so will help to mitigate the economic and social impact of the pandemic. According to Deloitte, FinTechs, in strategic partnerships with financial institutions, retailers and government sectors across jurisdictions, can help democratise financial services by providing basic financial services in a fair and transparent way to economically vulnerable populations.Digital finance is also expanding in other areas. Health concerns in the COVID-19 era have made physical cash payments less practical, opening the door to an increase in digital payments and e-wallets. Though cash use was predicted to decline in any case, COVID-19 has hurried that decline, due to concerns that handing over money can cause human to human transmission of the virus. According to a Mastercard survey looking at the implications of the coronavirus pandemic, 82 percent of respondents worldwide viewed contactless as the cleaner way to pay, and 74 percent said they will continue to use contactless payment post-pandemic.In addition, improved ‘know your customer’ services are required to counter the rise in digital fraud and cyber crime since the beginning of the outbreak. As more of the global economic and financial system continues to move online, cyber defences will become even more crucial to protect data. Security-conscious FinTechs are designing their products with this in mind – even if face-to-face meetings and processes do return. Given the rising reliance on technology, digital transformation will be a primary focus for FIs in the months and years ahead. Whereas previous efforts to integrate technology may have been limited in scope, many FIs are awakening to the fact that in order to deliver an efficient, effective and sustainable banking service, they must adopt a more holistic approach to digital transformation, which includes utilising FinTech.

Created in 2015 in Cape Town by Andrew Watkins-Ball, the company, which specializes in savings, loans and insurance for people and small businesses far from the traditional banking system, has raised $55 million (50 million euro) in debt and venture capital from the American bank.

Created in 2015 in Cape Town by Andrew Watkins-Ball, the company, which specializes in savings, loans and insurance for people and small businesses far from the traditional banking system, has raised $55 million (50 million euro) in debt and venture capital from the American bank.

The company has raised nearly $146 million since its creation from renowned players such as Google, which integrated Jumo into its accelerator in May 2017, the Mastercard foundation, development institutions such as Finnfund and Proparco (the private branch of the French Development Agency).

World Remit. Starting from 2016, it is now possible to use World Remit website and mobile app to send money from Algeria to Malawi and other 150 countries. You can load your World Remit account through World Remit cash collection points, or some local banks in Algeria. Advantages of using World Remit: It is safe and secure.

PayPal. It is not possible to send directly to Malawi using this service with a normal account balance. The balance will need to be withdrawn from a linked bank account. DZ Bank and its branches do issue VISA/MasterCard cards that you can then link to your PayPal account. From there, you can load your PayPal account and send it to anyone in Malawi. 

South Africa“South Africa was an early adopter of QR code-based payments,” said Gabriel Swanepoel, vice president of business integration at Mastercard Southern Africa. “The first QR code app was introduced by SnapScan, a subsidiary of Standard Bank, in 2013.”QR codes are a prevalent method of payment in South Africa.

This innovation not only simplifies consumers’ lives, but allows more merchants to become a part of the electronic payments cycle, giving them the opportunity to safely conduct transactions and appeal to consumers who prefer not using cash. We have seen significant growth rates, and have managed to reach up to 1 million transactions per da

When we founded Fawry, an electronic bill payment and presentment company, we were very aware of the gap between card usage and the limited acceptance points in Egypt. Our aim was to extend acceptance channels beyond the traditional card acceptance points to make life easier for consumers in Egypt.

Fawry’s service is playing a key role in revolutionizing the payment industry in Egypt, a country where only 10% of the population of 85 million people has access to formal banking services.

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Avec cette prise de participation de 3 millions de dollars, Proparco soutiendra la croissance de JUMO. Elle contribuera au développement de l’inclusion financière des populations exclues du système bancaire formel. Deux tiers des clients de JUMO sont issus du secteur informel.

FinTech companies such as PayPal, Visa, Square, Mastercard and others are expanding cryptocurrency (crypto) and blockchain capabilities but several factors could limit widespread acceptance in the near term, says Fitch Ratings. We expect strategic crypto investments to have a limited near-term effect on credit profiles, given modest capital deployed and the long ramp time. However, adding crypto capabilities opens up incremental revenue streams for these companies, even if the return on investment over time and compliance risks are uncertain.