In spite of the continent’s booming economy and dearth of any legacy payment infrastructure, an oddity has arisen. While this has led to an explosion of payment platforms and solutions tailored to the requirements of companies and consumers in Africa, it has also led to an overall decrease in the number of payment options available to customers.
A large portion of Africa’s population lacks basic computer skills and is less likely to get a bank account. It is made worse by a lack of government oversight and a woefully inadequate telecommunications infrastructure. Only 10% of Egyptians had bank accounts in 2010, 4% of Egyptians had debit cards, and fewer than 2% of Egyptians had credit cards in 2010. Africa, on the other hand, is outpacing the rest of the world in mobile commerce.
Money transfer services like M-Pesa, which use mobile phones to send money, are widely used in Kenya and Tanzania, where 58% of adults have access to mobile phones. Nowadays these numbers have changed. According to the 2020 data, the number of users of Egyptian bank accounts has increased by more than 40%. Similar to this rate, the number of debit and credit card users has expanded significantly as well. In this article, we’ll mainly focus on which are some of the most popular payment options in Africa and which is among them the winning one.
M-Pesa
When the mobile network service was founded in 2007 by Vodafone and Safaricom, many mobile phone users throughout Africa had their first and sometimes their only access to financial services via their phones. To date, it has made a substantial contribution to the rise of formal financial inclusion throughout Africa, enabling millions of people in the developing world to shift away from a cash-based society and manage their financial affairs at a low cost.
Other nations, including Tanzania, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho and Ghana have also adopted M-PESA. Africa’s formal financial inclusion has also grown as a result of the platform.
M-Pesa offers several banking services to both consumers and companies. Customers may transfer and receive cash, make bull transfers, and get money from individuals in distant areas of the globe. Its platform may also be used by businesses to handle payments.
Astropay
Astropay is another one of the most popular and winning payment methods in Africa. Customers who don’t have a bank account may use the AstroPay prepaid card to make purchases and pay for them online. Paying via cash, bank transfer or direct debit is all that is required to replenish the card’s balance. They just choose AstroPay as their payment option, input their unique 16-digit card number, and pay.
It is worth noting that Astropay is quite currently used among traders, especially Forex investors. The main reasons behind this are the low commission fees, and the fast withdrawing and deposit processes, which makes the trading process more convenient. As a result of this, the demand for the Astropay Forex brokers increased at record numbers. In order to find a reliable and reputable Forex broker in the industry, it’s quite important to look at the reviews and choose the one, which will allow you to make your trading process more beneficial and get the most out of your investment.
The growth of the continent’s telecom market has been one of the fastest in the world. Even though the growth rates are impressive, there is still a big digital gap. Many people are still not connected to the internet, and for those that are, the cost of connecting remains expensive and bandwidth is severely constrained in many locations.
Other payment methods used by Africans
Visa has grown in popularity in recent years and now accounts for the majority of all credit card transactions. In Africa, 48.6% of all credit card transactions are made using a Visa card (The Paypers). In the last four years, credit cards have fallen from 45% of the market to 41%.
Many of the country’s largest stores, including as Edcon, Foschini, and Truworths, provide store cards in addition to standard credit cards. However, the number of shop cards being issued is decreasing, which indicates a change in consumer preferences.
Despite the fact that cash is still commonly utilized in Kenya, the mobile money market is just as common.. Mobile money is one of the greatest instances of a mature sector where users have access to more than one SIM card. Customers in Nigeria are starting to use mobile-enabled payment methods, making the country the fastest-growing market in the world. According to the study, the need for frictionless and cashless payments is being driven by the younger generation.
In both Nigeria and South Africa, people’s reliance on currency has waned dramatically over time. The majority of individuals in the latter nation (43%) utilize card-based payments instead of digital wallets. In Africa, the use of digital wallets as a payment mechanism is on the rise, accounting for 17% of all eCommerce transactions (Statista). With over two million transactions in Africa in April 2020, Samsung Pay has overtaken Apple Pay as the most widely used digital wallet on the continent
