Operator Airtel Africa and payments company Cellulant have announced deals that will help them to expand their presence in the Zambian market.
Cellulant Zambia has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Lusaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) to offer digital payments to its member businesses.
This means that Lusaka Chamber of Commerce members can now access payment solutions that will enable them to accept payments from their customers’ preferred mobile money wallet.
This is another newsworthy deal for Cellulant’s payment platform Tingg, which integrates over 290 banks across Africa. Tingg is a one-stop payments aggregator for multinational corporations and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) – hence, Celulant points out, the significance of this partnership.
In fact says Cellulant, Tingg’s uptake across Africa is in high gear, with products like in-store payments which leverage mobile money and mobile banking as payment methods through USSD and QR codes. This streamlines business administration processes for merchants while expanding the range of payment options they can offer customers.
Meanwhile Airtel Africa has followed up yesterday’s announcement regarding spectrum acquisition in Tanzania with the news that its Zambian subsidiary, Airtel Zambia, has purchased 60MHz of additional spectrum spread across the 800MHz and 2600MHz bands from the Zambia Information and Communications Technology Authority (ZICTA), for a gross consideration of US$29 million, payable in local currency.
As with the Tanzanian acquisition, the additional spectrum will support network expansion in the market for both mobile data and fixed wireless home broadband capability, including 5G rollout. Airtel says that Zambia is one of its largest markets by revenue.
