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TechInAfrica – Mastercard is expanding its Engage Program in Sub-Saharan Africa by holding the events in Kenya and Nigeria as part of its initiative to introduce its board partnership opportunities to local fintech innovators in both countries.
Mastercard Engage is a global partnership and development program launched to fintech innovators in Nairobi and Lagos. It helps to build digital payment technology ecosystems, connecting financial institutions, merchants, and IoT manufacturers with the potential tech partners that help them to provide payment solutions both for businesses and consumers.
The program was launched in February 2017 and ever since it has more than tripled the number of fintech partners. These partners have a range of capabilities, including deploying digital wallets, providing tokenization, facilitating instant payouts, and introducing a mobile point of sale solutions, and so on.
Omokehinde Adebanjo, Area Business Head, Mastercard West Africa, said: “At Mastercard, we believe partnerships, particularly with regional fintechs with a deep understanding of the local environment, are crucial for ongoing innovation that delivers relevant payment solutions to empower communities. Engage connects financial institutions and merchants with technology partners within a broad innovation ecosystem, helping companies create and launch the most innovative payment solutions for businesses and consumers.”
According to Adebanjo, Mastercard Engage deal with three main challenges: the need for payment solution providers to continuously be creative with their offerings; the growing demand for financial service institutions to embrace digital innovation to provide secure, compliant solutions; and the need for advanced and convenient financial solutions to support business and consumers.
Furthermore, Mastercard Engage utilizes a public website to help issuers and merchants to find the proper solutions for them, including digital wallets, tokenized payment services, mobile POS, security solutions, amongst others, and find the right tech partners to help them create the solutions in their markets.
Source: guardian.ng
