The volume of payment technology news from Africa grows apace with two recent announcements: a payment services licence for Unlimit in Tanzania and two companies – ExiPay and Izwe – teaming up to launch a new point of sale device in Zambia.
Unlimit, a global fintech company, has announced its entry into the Tanzanian market and its reception of a Bank of Tanzania (BOT) licence, marking another significant step in the company’s expansion within the region.
The approval of Unlimit as an authorised payment service provider by the BOT will allow the fintech to provide a range of new offerings such as business payments, merchant services and outbound payments, among other things, to the Tanzanian market.
Unlimit says the launch of Tanzanian operations marks an important step in its broader strategy of expanding into Africa and follows the approval of similar licences last year in Nigeria and Kenya.
Unlimit was initially launched in 2009 with a focus on payment processing services. Today the company says it boasts one of the largest in-house developed payment infrastructures in the world.
Meanwhile payments company ExiPay has partnered with financial services provider Izwe to launch Izwe Pay, an all-in-one point of sale (POS) device, with an initial focus on the Zambian market.
The partners say that the Izwe Pay POS can accept both mobile and card payments and provide additional financial services on a merchant terminal.
They add that research shows that while millions of Zambians use telephone or mobile banking, the bulk of the country's POS machines are not set up to accept these payments.
Willie van Zyl, CEO, Izwe Group, explains: “The demand for versatile payment solutions has grown in Zambia, in line with more businesses and individuals moving to embrace digital payment methods, particularly mobile money solutions.”
To realise this solution, Izwe became both an investor and a client of ExiPay. ExiPay integrated Izwe’s service requirements into a single POS terminal solution and oversaw the building of Izwe’s payments infrastructure.
The companies claim the POS solution includes integrations with banks and back-end portals, and connections to the national financial switch in Zambia.
