Affordable digital banking to revolutionize price-sensitive East African payments market

By The Exchange Last updated Apr 24, 2021

Over a couple of decades, cash and mobile app money transactions such as M-Pesa have dominated the financial space, but with its growth, there is a new collaboration with Fintechs set in place to capture the price-sensitive market with improved innovation and open-loop digital solutions in East Africa. This follows the Kenyan retail-tech startup, Tanda which…

Financial technology (Fintech) is used to describe new technology that seeks to improve and automate the delivery and use of financial services. At its core, fintech is utilized to help companies, business owners, and consumers to better manage their financial operations, processes, and lives by utilizing specialized software and algorithms that are used on computers and, increasingly, smartphones.

The International President of Ukheshe Technologies Mark Dankworth, firmly believes that the region is poised for a surge in digital banking growth, with the likes of MCQR and virtual cards likely to make the biggest impact.

This follows the Kenyan retail-tech startup, Tanda which leveraged Ukheshe Technologies’ cutting-edge Eclipse API to increase their digital banking offering in Kenya and East Africa to include QR payments, digital wallets, and the issuing of physical and virtual cards. The move saw Tanda agents and merchants empowered throughout East Africa to implement 100,000 physical touchpoints within the next 24 months.

ALSO, READ: How Forex Trading Market Works

According to Dankworth despite Kenya’s continued innovation in financial services, thanks to mobile money platforms, a report from FSD Kenya suggests that between 2016 and 2019, traders received over 90% of their revenue in cash.

“High transaction fees on many digital payment platforms, coupled with inadequate access to traditional banking infrastructure, have limited the greater adoption of digital payments, particularly in the more price-sensitive sectors of the market of the Kenyan and East African region.”

As a leading fintech enabler, Dankworth says Ukheshe is providing financial service players, telecommunications providers, and other organizations in the region, with truly digital-first solutions thanks to the Eclipse API, making informal banking accessible and lucrative growth market for Ukheshe partners.

“As the East African region remains heavily under-served, collaborating with Tanda as an enablement partner ensures we can be at the forefront of providing the right solutions to increase the uptake and use of digital payments.”

“Through Eclipse our clients are able to customize and cherry-pick from a vast range of payment products. We remove the heavy lifting for fintech, banks, and telcos by offering seamless payment solutions that are as convenient as they are affordable” says Dankworth.

The Chief Executive Officer of Tanda Geoffrey Mulei, says in the startup process they agreed to engage in partnership with Ukheshe due to its simple manner and in which digital wallets, card issuing, and acquiring can be rolled out.

“Traditionally, these capabilities have either been highly inaccessible or cost-prohibitive for a significant majority of players in the fintech space and can take several years to deploy. The Tanda / Ukheshe collaboration has the potential to close these critical gaps, as it enables cheap transactions on digital platforms and accelerates the deployment of banking infrastructure.”

In addition, Mark Dankworth says that Eclipse offers cost-effective payment solutions for organizations to enable their small merchant customers to accept digital payments.

“With simple, accessible, and affordable solutions that solve real-world pain points; touch-less, paperless digital innovations will likely accelerate exponentially in East Africa and across the entire continent.”

The post Affordable digital banking to revolutionize price-sensitive East African payments market appeared first on The Exchange.