A Mastercard and the fintech giant oPay recently announced a strategic partnership, which marks a significant push towards greater financial inclusion and economic prosperity, as well as opening up digital commerce to millions of people across the African continent.
The partnership between the two institutions will allow a large number of OPay consumers and merchants, in countries such as Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Pakistan, South Africa, – to be involved with brands and companies throughout the world. world thanks to a Mastercard virtual payment solution linked to the OPay eWallet.
This agreement is the latest in Mastercard's emerging markets strategic program, where the technology giant will collaborate with African Fintech, and which has taken great steps in recent years, in order to expand access to digital payments, allow multiple services of style of life, create new paths to financial inclusion and support the next generation of super-apps.
OPay eWallet has been a wallet that has attracted many consumers, who are increasingly looking for seamless user experiences on a single platform, where it offers easier interactions to complete various day-to-day needs, including sending and receiving money, ordering food and groceries, as well as transportation, loans, investing, and listing items you want to sell.
According to what was revealed, in the initial phase of this partnership, OPay customers will benefit from the Mastercard virtual payment solution linked to their OPay wallets, so that they can make purchases in global brands of leisure, travel, accommodation, entertainment, streaming services and a lot more.
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Another feature revealed in this partnership is that the service will be available regardless of whether the customer has a bank account or not, in addition to allowing small business owners to buy from suppliers abroad and pay with the secure virtual payment solution.
"At Mastercard, our innovation strategy is rooted in partnerships to support inclusion at scale. Our partnership with OPay demonstrates our commitment to supporting payments providers around the world to create an interconnected global payments ecosystem that benefits a set of consumers with unique needs.”“, said Amnah Ajmal, Executive Vice President, Market Development, Mastercard EEMEA.
On the other hand, Yahui Zhou, CEO of OPay, stressed that “As the Middle East and Africa's leading fintechs, we are delighted to partner with Mastercard as we continue our journey to advance financial inclusion, helping to open the global economy to more consumers and businesses across the Middle East and Africa."
Since the beginning of its operations in 2018, active users of OPay have grown to 15 million in more than ten markets in which it operates, and where the latest released reports show that the company platform processes millions of transactions per day, on average.
In Nigeria alone, where OPay has a significant market share, users have saved billions of dollars over the last four years through savings accounts linked to the credit of their mobile wallets and small loans from lenders using their platform.
Please note that plans are underway to launch OPay services in other markets over the next three to five years, with Angola being one of the market targets, significantly boosting the growth of digital inclusion and digital commerce in Africa, while expanding the inclusion of OPay customers in the global economy.
