UNLOCKING DIGITAL MERCHANT PAYMENTS IN AFRICA...TANZANIA Strong activity of card, mobile money and...

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HOW TO ACCELERATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF A CASHLESS SOCIETY 2019 Report UNLOCKING DIGITAL MERCHANT PAYMENTS IN AFRICA

Transcript of UNLOCKING DIGITAL MERCHANT PAYMENTS IN AFRICA...TANZANIA Strong activity of card, mobile money and...

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HOW TO ACCELERATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF A CASHLESS SOCIETY

2019 Report

UNLOCKING DIGITAL MERCHANT PAYMENTS IN AFRICA

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2U N L O C K I N G D I G I T A L M E R C H A N T P A Y M E N T S I N A F R I C A

Content:

Introduction 3

Digital merchant payments: the basics 4

The state of cashless merchant payments in Africa 7

How to accelerate market maturity? 12

• Increase consumer incentives to adopt digital payments 13

• Improve banks’ business and distribution models for POS terminals 15

• Better user experience and value chain differentiation 17

• Effective regulation and incentives 19

Conclusion 21

Who is Yoco? 22

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By first becoming intimately acquainted with the current challenges, in the adoption of cashless payments at the point of sale in each region, we focused our analysis on how to accelerate market maturity for cashless transactions. The spirit of this report is to look forward, propose approaches based on international best practice examples, and to support and develop cashless payments markets for SMEs around the continent.

It is encouraging to have seen governments, central banks, financial service companies and Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) across the African continent promote the benefits of cashless payments - in particular at POS - with big announcements and investments. As a result, mobile money, and to a lesser extent card payments, have elbowed into the daily lives of many African consumers. But cash is still the dominant mode of payment, accounting for over 95% of transactions in most African countries.

To better understand the state of digital payments, what drives the development of cashless societies and how to effectively amplify its progress, Yoco set out to study 15 African markets. We met with regulators, banks, telcos and local entrepreneurs in each country to get a better sense of the local environment and find

common trends and narratives across markets. This report highlights our main findings on the current state of digital merchant payments, what factors are limiting the evolution of these markets, and our recommendations on how to take better advantage of these opportunities, to accelerate the development of cashless societies and financial inclusion across Africa.

“ We are convinced that cash is no longer king - the customer is.“

Our research indicates that despite the significant philosophical, structural, technical, economical and regulatory barriers to sustainable development that remain today, the key to developing cashless markets is to drive consumer demand for digital payments. Across the continent, we have seen both mobile money usage grow at double digits per year, and even card terminal penetration growing on average of 20%. We propose a shift in mindset that puts the consumer at the centre of the cashless society and helps them go cashless through economic incentives, making it more appealing to store money in their digital account and build rewarding structures for them to use it at the point of sale - ultimately making a digital payment feel more rewarding than a cash payment.

Introduction

U N L O C K I N G D I G I T A L M E R C H A N T P A Y M E N T S I N A F R I C A

In this report we will present our research and analysis of the major, current

opportunities and challenges in the development of thriving digital payment

ecosystems, particularly at the point of sale, across Africa.

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Digital merchant payments: the basicsWhat drives merchant payments?

Cashless trading at the point of sale is driven by consumers. When incentivised to purchase digitally, they drive merchants to diversify their payment acceptance options. These digital payment acceptance options are usually provided

by traditional financial services institutions, and more recently by fintechs and new entrants like Yoco. The figure below shows a few ways in which consumers can be incentivised to choose to go cashless at the point of sale.

U N L O C K I N G D I G I T A L M E R C H A N T P A Y M E N T S I N A F R I C A 4

Access to funds

Usage incentives The Exchange

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How does interoperability work?

Since it competes with the ease of using cash, it is vital that the digital payment exchange process be successful and frictionless, and that funds be reliably settled, building trust with both the merchant and consumer. Thus, major card networks (Visa and Mastercard) pioneered the “Four-Party Model”, which seamlessly connects the consumer and merchants’ banking institutions - thereby ensuring comprehensive

global interoperability. This basic structure is what allows a consumer with a card from a local bank to easily make a payment, either at home or abroad and ensures that the merchant will timeously receive the correct funds. This global interoperability is what has made card networks so powerful and indespensable. Also, merchants now usually need only one terminal, accepting payments from almost anyone, from almost anywhere in the world.

However, closed-loop networks (like M-Pesa, WeChat, etc.) have been appearing across the continent and many other emerging markets. These networks have little to no connectivity to other digital transfer systems, and so rely on aggressively building out their proprietary distribution, ecosystem features, merchants and acceptance points. In many current mobile money implementations, this means that funds cannot be sent to, or withdrawn from consumers who are not using the same network because there is no aggregator of transfer methods to ensure a reliable flow of funds. This has resulted in a complex acceptance landscape, where merchants are forced to accept a number of proprietary payment methods (e.g. mobile money, QR codes, POS terminals, etc.) that all come with different fees and settlement times. This artificially and unnecessarily places the merchant and consumer at odds with one another - a market distortion which is, thankfully, as disruptive as it is reconcilable. Successful interoperability initiatives, such as the one implemented by the Central Bank of Ghana or Mowali over the past year, have made bank accounts, mobile money and card schemes fully interoperable.

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Consumer Merchant

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What happens behind the scenes, and how are the fees put together?

The main motivation for companies to build closed-loop ecosystems is to save on what are perceived as high transaction fees imposed by different players in the payments value chain - thereby making digital transfers more affordable and ultimately, allowing them to gain more control over their entire financial network. The flow of funds during an exchange, in a traditional 4-Party Model, is depicted below. Each player along the traditional value chain is usually highly specialised in facilitating a specific part of a transaction at scale and contributes to the final cost of the

payments. This is usually charged to the merchant as a Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) on each transaction performed.

In a Three-Party Model, (like in the case of mobile money) the operator of the “wallet” owns and manages all the steps to authorise and settle a transaction internally. While this seemingly simplifies the process for the wallet operator and reduces transaction fees, it also limits the opportunity for specialisation and scale of players along that value chain. Ultimately, this harms the interoperability, quality, reliability and scalability of the entire payments infrastructure to the detriment of all economic participants.

This realisation is already being explored further by initiatives like Mowali, which is expected to interconnect the MTN and Orange mobile money networks across their footprints. This promising shift has begun to transition traditionally closed loop telco wallets, to becoming more open in the long run - laying the groundwork for a less encumbered payment marketplace, ripe for innovations in overall efficiency and technological sophistication.

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MerchantConsumer

The Exchange

Card Networks

Payment authorisation layer

Payment clearing and settlement

Payment facilitation

Payment gateway / terminal integrationGoods/

servicesreceived

Payment in person

Paymentonline

Paymentmade

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7 U N L O C K I N G D I G I T A L M E R C H A N T P A Y M E N T S I N A F R I C A

We have analysed 15 African markets from a cashless merchant payment perspective, and compiled an overview of their unique

characteristics and resultant developmental readiness.

The state of cashless merchant payments

in Africa

In order to understand the state of cashless merchant payments, it is first important to understand the development of both the issuing bank and mobile money accounts as well as the acceptance of digital payments.

Although in 2019, the number of Africans with bank cards is still sparse - only 7 of the 15 countries we studied had card

penetration rates over 40% - we found that once mobile money accounts are included in the analysis, the outlook improves significantly. The lower cost and lower KYC accounts tied to subscribers’ mobile numbers have broadened penetration of digital stores of value in many countries, with a significant share of the population now using electronic accounts across diverse markets.

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See map on next page >>>

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MOROCCO

Recent introduction of payment institutions to increase financial inclusion but further drive compression on transaction margins.

GHANA

Strong cashless push by telcos and banks, supported by strong interoperability framework, with main focus on MoMo and QR payments.

RWANDA

Small market with low usage of digital payments at the POS despite strong government push.

CÔTE D’IVOIRE

Affluent market, with formalised retail. Card seen as status symbol as well as high usage of mobile money with card at front end.

ZAMBIA

Low account penetration (less than 30%) on both bank and mobile money but high growth of account and usage, however little digital payments at the POS.

NAMIBIA

High digital account penetration, low merchant penetration through high bank fees, POS charges and consumer fees.

BOTSWANA

High transactions and rental fees of banks in POS, but high penetration due to small market with high sophistication.

ZIMBABWE

Between bank terminals and Econet the top to mid-end of the market is well served, although at unprofitable prices.

NIGERIA

Regulator favouring large players and making card acquiring unprofitable through ceiling and limiting mobile money through strict licenses (to change in 2019).

EGYPT

Market has healthy fees but low consumer demand for payment while banks push strong POS subsidies by government pressure.

UGANDA

Strong preference for cash and high price sensitivity. Misaligned incentives for mobile money usage due to new tax.

KENYA

Dominated by M-Pesa with rising card and POS penetration. Big opportunity for it to become de facto standard given an open ecosystem.

TANZANIA

Strong activity of card, mobile money and other players in pushing merchant payments, but no clear winner between mobile money, cards and QR payments - partly due to government uncertainty.

MAURITIUS

Highly developed digital payments market with highest card penetration per capita and a strong Asian influence to drive WeChat and Alipay acceptance.

MOZAMBIQUE

Regulatory push to local switching and centralised control introduced uncertainty and unreliability in the market, leading to strong growth of M-Pesa but still early days of merchant payments.

Breakdown by country

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As depicted above, card and mobile money deployments are not always mutually exclusive developmental directions. While markets such as Morocco, Egypt, Mauritius and Nigeria are pure card markets, due to the regulatory restrictions around telco-led wallets, other markets such as Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, Kenya, Ghana and Zambia, have developed both mobile money and traditional account penetration in parallel. Lastly, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Côte D’ivoire, and Mozambique seem to have almost leapfrogged traditional bank accounts in favour of mobile money.

This coexistence of both types of accounts can be explained by the sustained aspirational appeal of cards, as well as the increased usage of cards as front ends to accessing multiple stores of value - such as mobile money (e.g. Orange issuing Visa cards for mobile money, or Safaricom‘s M-Pesa card) or prepaid government IDs (e.g. Kenya‘s new Huduma ID card).

“We believe that in the future, mobile money and cards will coexist in most markets on the continent and that cards will remain a low cost, low friction interoperable way of accessing a store of value.“

- Katlego Maphai, CEO of Yoco

As accounts and cards are increasingly pushed into the market, it becomes crucial to enhance the payment acceptance infrastructure which it relies on. Whilst having achieved high annual growth rates, the challenge for most markets currently, is low penetration of point of sale POS devices. 12 of the markets we examined have a POS penetration rate below 20% of SMEs.

Nevertheless, the potential for growth is abundantly evident in markets like Zambia, Egypt and Ghana, with card penetration rates ranging from 27% to 48%, (albeit somewhat constrained by less than 10% POS penetration). Notwithstanding, across the 15 target markets investigated, the average POS penetration is escalating at a promising rate of 19% p.a.

Figure 3: Card vs Mobile Money Penetration

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Figure 1

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Namibia, Botswana and Mauritius already have comparatively advanced cashless merchant payment markets, thanks to their small size, high POS penetration, high GDP per capita and elevated incentives for consumers. Based on current growth statistics, we believe that Côte D’ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Zambia and Egypt are on track to becoming mature digital payment markets by 2021. We have also identified which roadblocks are preventing markets such as Nigeria, Morocco, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Rwanda, and Mozambique from reaching their own optimal development.

Because issuing and acquiring have a chicken-and-egg relationship, creative ways can be found to break the cycle of dependence. For instance, PagSeguro, an mPOS company in Brazil, issues prepaid debit cards with every card machine sold and settles funds into those cards instantly, increasing acceptance and card penetration at the same time.

POS Penetration Development

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Figure 2

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“We believe that in the future, mobile money and cards will coexist in most markets on

the continent and that the cards will remain

a low cost, low friction interoperable way of

accessing a store of value.“

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How to accelerate market maturity?Both issuing and acceptance penetration across Africa are growing at an impressive rate, but an uptake in merchant payments isn’t an automatic result. Based on our findings, the development of healthy cashless merchant payment markets can be significantly accelerated in four main ways.

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Increase consumer incentives to adopt digital paymentsIn today’s economic climate, consumers decide how to pay based on perceived convenience and cost. Currently, the payment method of choice is primarily cash; it’s always available, always accepted and “free”. Upon examination of other successful cashless markets, we maintain that they are driven and developed by consumer demand - if customers prefer hard currency, merchants tend to follow. Therefore we believe that encouraging a healthy digital payment marketplace begins with triggering and then continuously driving consumer usage by reducing economic barriers and increasing the perceived value to customers. The main levers available to achieve this are:

In order to incentivise digital payments, the introduction of more rewarding electronic payment options is required, reducing the perceived costs and therefore attracting more consumer demand. Other than rewards and cashback, a powerful solution is the access to credit tied to a specific payment method. This type of product has an immense variety of applications, ranging from traditional credit cards, to Safaricom’s new Fuliza overdraft product (based on M-Pesa), to Branch’s recent announcement to issue Visa cards for consumer loans and South East Asia’s Gojek, which offers an overdraft facility within the consumer wallet app. Furthermore, the aspirational social signaling associated with cashless payments can be enhanced and made even more attractive by elevating its public appeal and reputation.

Incentivise the use of digital payment methods by giving consumers access to credit, rewards and loyalty programs, a reduction of KYC requirements and ongoing education and awareness.

Disincentivising the use of cash can be achieved by improving the availability of digital payment options, reducing the friction (perceived or real) for consumers, and improving the payment infrastructure in the early stages - while increasing the cost, and limiting the availability of cash in the long run.

Financial incentives

Convenience

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In similar markets in South East Asia, the power of incentivising consumers to pay digitally has been creatively explored with astonishing success. Ride-sharing giants, Grab and Gojek present interesting (albeit high-cost) case studies. Grab offers a sophisticated rewards system in which customers earn points for every transaction, which are then redeemed for free services - such as food or spa treatments. Gojek, in Indonesia, offers up to 30% cashback for merchant payments, through their “Go-Pay” merchant payment service.

Disincentivising cash involves addressing its perceived convenience; cash could be made harder to access, more expensive and less accepted - while also easing the transition between cash and cashless options. In order to make digital payment methods more practical and convenient than the alternatives, consumer confidence in digital payments needs to be prioritised by accelerating dispute settlement (in case of fraud), maintaining high transaction reliability (no false charges), and the waiving of swipe fees imposed by issuers.

This strategy has been highly successful in many Northern European countries, where cash has almost disappeared from society. In India, a strong push towards digital payments has had prolific results, thanks to the combination of planned demonetisation and the introduction of the “Universal Payment Interface” - which advanced overall interoperability, and prompted aggressive acceptance infrastructure roll-outs. However, this bold step needs to be taken in a socially responsible context, once a country’s cashless economy has somewhat matured: after considerable account-and-acceptance market penetration, and successfully incentivising the widespread usage of such digital payment methods.

We maintain that the best way to generate demand for cashless payments is to focus on the needs of the consumer. However, the transition can also be simplified and made hugely rewarding for merchants - by helping them to train and incentivise their staff, as well as update and digitise their value chains.

Insentivised consumers spend more and merchants make more revenue which makes them less sensitive to MDR. It is crucial to support merchants with change management tools such as ongoing staff education and strategies for encouraging employees to accept digital payments, instead of cash.

Digitising supply chains is another way to ease the transition. If all the different suppliers within a merchant’s trading network are willing to accept digital payments, it becomes much easier and more convenient for the merchant to accept cashless payments too; funds can flow seamlessly within the digital environment, from customer to merchant to supplier. Higher MDRs create incentives to build larger distribution networks.

We maintain that the best way to generate demand for cashless payments is to focus on the needs of the consumer.

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Banks across the African continent have already embarked on significant work to reduce the capital outlay needed for POS devices, and to improve the overall business environment for cashless payments. Historically speaking, African banks have often struggled to serve SMEs due to inadequate customer acquisition channels and elevated costs. In addition to that, low Merchant Discount Rates (MDR) of an average 2.5%, paired with heavy subsidies for POS terminals (traditionally, bank subsidised) have hitherto limited African banks’ ability to generate profit, or invest in sustainable digital infrastructure for a cashless market environment.

We believe that governments and regulators should be focusing on building a conducive environment that allows new players the space to build adequate infrastructure, a reliable and safe digital transaction environment without imposing a market-distorting, burden on the private sector by regulating transaction fees. When banks are expected to deploy basic amenities, like electricity and telecommunications networks to the communities they serve, developing POS terminal networks becomes even more costly and financially unviable than in other similar economic regions of the world.

Improve banks’ business and distribution models for POS terminals

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The answer lies in a shift of perception - merchant acquiring needs to become a standalone and profitable business for banks across the continent so there’s an incentive to invest in infrastructure and business. Currently, most banks only recover the cost of acquiring a new merchant after 7 to 150 months, making it financially imprudent for them to also serve comparatively lower revenue-generating SMEs.

Some banks across the continent have introduced a variety of different products to reduce their capital outlay at merchant. On the one hand, QR codes are being pushed aggressively by both banks and card networks - however, it still requires users to have an account, a smartphone and be willing to try new payment technology. Currently, this only represents a small group of consumers, who are further discouraged by the low MDRs associated with QR codes. On the other hand, banks are also starting to consider better options for the long run, enabled by contactless cards and phones such as

the more affordable NFC-only readers or tap-on-phone technology which turns the phone into an acceptance point.

We believe that African banks can be successfully incentivised to effectively serve the broader majority of SMEs on the continent if they approach acquiring and distributing POS terminals as a profitable standalone business with the same stringent threshold for economic viability that they have for other areas of their enterprise. Developments in other markets, such as Mexico, have shown that once acquiring becomes a standalone business, digital payments at the point of sale skyrocket due to the strong alignment of incentives for every player in the market. We further propose that the key to making this possible is through the involvement of third party aggregators and specialised players. This allows for better distribution strategies and lower cost of terminals.

The answer lies in a shift of perception - merchant

acquiring needs to become a standalone and profitable business for banks across

the continent.

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Mobile money has been on a winning streak across the continent in the past decade and is still going strong. According to GSMA data, in 2018 there were a total of 395.7 million mobile money accounts in Africa, transacting $28.6 billion, both still growing by 15% annually. Most people use that money on their phones for remittances, P2P and bill

payments, with only around 10% of transactions being processed by merchants. But there has already been a large improvement in these figures in slightly more advanced markets like Kenya and Zimbabwe. This creates a unified experience for both Visa and Mastercard users.

In order to better understand why there is resistance to the use of digital payment methods amongst African consumers, we analysed the typical relationship between customers and cash, as opposed to mobile money wallets. Many consumers across the continent do not see their digital wallets as a viable store of value, but rather keep their money in cash - only funding their accounts when needed and to make P2P transactions. This creates artificial friction in the flow of cashless payments, by adding the unnecessary step of having to transfer cash into the wallet, before making a payment and creating a perceived inconvenience for consumers, and consequential resistance by merchants.

Better user experience and value chain differentiation

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In China, WeChat solved this problem by awarding significant interest on wallet balances in the early phases of development. More recently, they have started allowing customers to invest money at very competitive interest rates. By building mechanisms that pull funds from bank accounts and cards instantly they have effectively eliminated the need for manually transferring to wallets at every individual payment.

WeChat has demonstrated that once e-wallets are easily funded, and healthy incentives for payment methods are employed, the focus is appropriately shifted onto the cashless user experience; taking its rightful place as the key determinant of consumer demand for digital payment options.

Technological innovation in the acceptance of digital payments plays a catalytic role in making cashless transacting more convenient and attractive. Consumer payment behaviour is fundamentally driven by the perceived relative value of digital vs cash trading. The main factors currently disincentivising consumer uptake of mobile money (and to some extent cards too), at the point of sale, are a lack of interoperability; cumbersome USSD-based user experiences; user confusion; failed transactions; long waiting times; potential for fraud; and high fees - sometimes levied on both sides of the transaction.

EcoCash in Zimbabwe, for example, allows customers to enter their phone number directly on POS devices, to receive a USSD payment request with PIN approval. Similar technology has led to some increase in activity at the point of sale, but it’s still not yet widely used.

Lastly, we believe it is vital for the mobile money value chain to mature and unbundle so that multiple players can compete and bring innovation to the digital payment experience. Some telcos, like Econet in Zimbabwe, have unbundled their financial services unit from their core business and listed it as a standalone entity on the stock exchange, allowing the digital financial services enterprise to flourish on its own. In the Philippines, PayMaya started off as part of PLDT (the largest MNO in the Philippines), and has since been spun out, raising over $200 million of external funding from the likes of Chinese internet giant, Tencent, in order to rapidly accelerate financial inclusion in the Philippines.

Technological innovation in the acceptance of digital payments plays

a catalytic role in making cashless transacting more convenient and

attractive. Consumer payment behaviour is fundamentally driven by the perceived relative value of digital vs cash trading.

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Regulators are rightly under mounting pressure to drive financial inclusion, reduce the cost of printing and handling currency and keep monetary policy in check, while also leading the cashless transformation of their economies. Effective regulation also plays a key role in setting the bar for interoperability, and adherence to global standards (like ISO), allowing different payment systems to work together.

In response to these challenges, some authorities have introduced reduced or regulated fees for digital transactions, ostensibly in an attempt to address the wider cost-barriers to entry for both consumers and merchants. As a result, Nigerian card transaction fees are limited to 0.75% or below, and Moroccan fees are maintained below 1% by the regulator - while average fees on the continent are 2.5%.

At first glance it may seem like a benevolent strategy but the regulation of interchange and MDRs is a negative economic development. In most countries where it has been introduced prematurely it has led to a market failure and a deadweight loss for smaller players in the digital payments space. The main reason is that low fees distort market economics in favour of larger players who can afford to subsidise their losses during the acquisition phase. This further reduces the incentive, for both small and large players, to invest in infrastructure and consumer education, which ultimately also hampers consumer adoption, resulting in the exact opposite effect to the policy’s original intention.

We have found that the regulatory environment itself can also act act as an additional deterrent to market entry, while erroneously protecting nonoptimal incumbents. For example, the Nigerian Central Bank introduced the framework of Payment Service Banks, which set funding requirements for payments companies at up to $15 million, hindering access to innovators, while protecting an inefficient status quo.

Effective regulation & incentives

Nig

eria

Zim

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e

Mor

occo

Moz

ambi

que

Gha

na

Nam

ibia

Mau

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us

Ken

ya

Cot

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Ivoi

re

Rw

anda

Bot

swan

a

Zam

bia

Egy

pt

Tanz

ania

Uga

nda

MDR in SA

3.00%

2.00%

1.00%

0.00%

MDR per Country

U N L O C K I N G D I G I T A L M E R C H A N T P A Y M E N T S I N A F R I C A19

Figure 4

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We are convinced that cash is no longer king

- the customer is!

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ConclusionCashless payment markets across Africa are rapidly being developed, but they have often been approached in ways that don’t incentivise the right actions - the focus has not been on meeting the needs of consumers or allowing all players in the ecosystem to build out acceptance in an economically viable way.

Upon our analysis, we suggest that in order to accelerate market maturity for cashless transactions, central banks, MNOs, commercial banks, card networks and other innovators need to focus on consumer-centric market-making models, which adapt to the reality that customers decide how they pay at the POS. These need to be incentivised in order to change their behaviour.

These methods should include the right encouragement for storing and spending money digitally in such a way that it allows financial services companies to continuously invest in infrastructure - having already induced a healthy consumer demand to support its growth. Furthermore, regulators should focus on loosening restrictions, to allow new entrants to the model, thereby enabling markets to set sustainable fees, creating access to sophisticated value chains and allowing for exponential innovation and competition.

People are what make a place. We support a broader economic vision for our continent’s financial payment services sectors, driven by what different communities of consumers need, within their respective markets the world over. This strategy is more in touch, relevant and sensitive to the ongoing need for market adaptation and refinement. We believe that our approach will ensure the best path forward - towards cashless societies that are inclusive, progressive and sustainable - throughout the richly varied economies of the African continent.

We are convinced that cash is no longer king - the customer is!

U N L O C K I N G D I G I T A L M E R C H A N T P A Y M E N T S I N A F R I C A21

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Special ThanksWe want to express our sincere gratitude to all individuals and organisations who contributed to the development of this report.

In particular, we would like to thank Antonia Esser and Cenfri, Charles Niehaus as well as all central banks, banks, telcos, fintechs and other individuals and organisations who supported us on the ground. These companies enabled us to get a better understanding of the merchant payment landscape across Africa to refine and challenge our findings.

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Who is Yoco?

We exist to help entrepreneurs thrive - whether they have moonshot visions or more down to earth ambitions.

Our payments and point of sale technology gives small businesses an easily accessible and simple to use platform that helps them sell their products and services, whether on a street corner or in a fancy mall. By giving these entrepreneurs the tools they need to start, run and grow their businesses - we help to create jobs, thriving communities and drive economic growth. Our 50 000 (August, 2019) - strong small business community also gives us the invaluable insights we need to create a frictionless payment experience for our customers, and theirs.

Yoco was founded in 2013 by four friends with a shared passion for smart technology and a desire to see small businesses succeed.

Click here to view the Yoco Journey

yoco.com

For any thoughts, questions or suggestions please contact the author: [email protected]