A flurry of deals and agreements underlines the continuing competition for a piece of the still-growing digital payment market in Africa. Some of the big names in the frame in two of the most recent announcements are Standard Bank, Volante Technologies, Orange Middle East and Africa (OMEA) and Mastercard.
Volante Technologies, which calls itself the global leader in payments as a service (PaaS), has announced a strategic partnership with major African bank Standard Bank to modernise payment infrastructure across the African continent.
This, says Volante, marks one of the most ambitious PaaS payment deals signed in history, with no other payment providers servicing this many countries for one single customer in their PaaS cloud.
The partnership, which is already live in South Africa, leverages Volante’s PaaS and embedded preprocessing, which works alongside current infrastructure, centralising multiple payment formats and standards into a consolidated system.
These solutions streamline the bank’s domestic and cross-border real-time, high-value, and bulk payments, reducing complexity, enhancing efficiency, and improving customer experience for Standard Bank’s corporate and investment banking clients.
In addition, adopting Volante’s platform accelerates Standard Bank’s transition to ISO 20022 standards, benefiting both the bank and its clients. ISO 20022 is a single standardisation approach to be used by all financial standards initiatives.
The Volante – Standard Bank agreement, which will soon expand across 18 additional African countries, seamlessly integrates with the bank’s existing legacy systems, managing over 50 clearing and settlement systems, and ensuring both operational continuity and scalability.
But that’s not the only recent big Africa-focused digital payment deal in the news. Orange Middle East and Africa (OMEA) and payment giant Mastercard have announced a strategic partnership to expand access to mobile financial services across sub-Saharan Africa.
This collaboration, described as one of the largest of its kind in the region, is set to enable millions of Orange Money wallet holders to access digital payments through Mastercard’s global network of merchants by 2025.
The partnership will be rolled out in seven countries including Cameroon, Central African Republic, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Senegal and Sierra Leone.
Through this collaboration Orange Money customers will be able to instantly obtain a virtual or physical debit card, linked directly to their Orange Money wallets. These cards will allow seamless payments, both locally and internationally, enabling transactions with local merchants and on any website or mobile app that accepts Mastercard.
Customers can easily request their virtual debit card via Max it – Orange’s Super App – and collect a physical card at a designated Orange Money Mastercard point of sale.
These two deals may be big – but they won’t be the last. The race to gain advantage in the digital payment business across the vast African market is clearly far from over.
