FinTech news in South Africa category

Google Wallet is now available in South Africa, the first market for this product in Africa, to make it easy for users to save and easily and securely access their payment cards, loyalty cards and boarding passes. Google said that cardholders of partner banks in South Africa that include FirstRand Bank, Discovery Bank, Investec, Standard Bank, ABSA and Nedbank can now add their details on the wallet, and make contactless payments using their Android phones and Wear OS devices. Google announced the South Africa launch alongside Moldova, Qatar, Serbia, Azerbaijan and Iceland, making the product available in 45 countries. The Google Wallet launch in South Africa comes more than a year after Apple Pay entered the market too.

While saying that the calling business will continue to grow in Africa, Talk360 co-founder and managing director for Africa Dean Hiine anticipates great growth for its payment platform, which he says will also make it easy for international merchants to sell to users in Africa too.

Embedded finance product for SMEs Churpy is also set to roll out a working capital financing product targeting small to medium enterprises supplying to the enterprise customers signed up to the startup’s SaaS product. The startup is connected with some of the largest banks in the region — including Citibank, Sidian, Stanbic and NCBA — through its API.

The idea for Casava came while VisaCover provided an alternative in the auto insurance market by allowing drivers of Uber, which was one of its partners, to make weekly insurance payments instead of quarterly or yearly payments insurance partners before it operated.

The continent is already a global leader in mobile money adoption, accounting for the bulk of the mobile money transactions made in 2020 — a year that saw the number of mobile money accounts rise by 43%. For instance, M-Pesa, a mobile money service by East Africa’s biggest telco, Safaricom, does not require internet connectivity for its customers to send and receive money, as well as to pay utility bills — the wallet turns subscribers’ phone numbers into a sort of proxy for bank accounts.