Africa-focused payments technology firm enza has partnered with money movement company TerraPay.
The collaboration, announced Wednesday (July 10), is designed to promote financial inclusion in Africa, the companies said in a news release provided to PYMNTS.
That means enza—with offices in South Africa and Egypt—can harness TerraPay’s connectivity to more than 2.1 billion mobile wallets, allowing for the acceptance of those wallets along with other domestic and international payment brands.
The partnership also aims to simplify cross-border payments for African businesses by leveraging TerraPay’s access to more than 7.5 billion bank accounts, upwards of 2 billion wallets, and over 6 million cards worldwide.
“Enza is delighted to be able to incorporate TerraPay’s capabilities into our propositions being delivered to many of Africa’s leading banks,” said Andrew Key, the company’s executive director. “We are particularly excited about the role the partnership will play in transforming the experience of businesses across Africa, bringing many of them into the formal financial ecosystem for the first time.”
PYMNTS spoke recently with TerraPay President Ruben Salazar Genovez about digital payments engagement in another part of the world: Brazil.
With the rise of what he called “device dependency,” consumers, two-thirds of whom own smartphones, have begun to demand that everything be done online and in real time.
“The developer community knows about these traits, and they continue to create apps that we did not know we needed … until we start using them,” Genovez told PYMNTS Karen Webster as part of a panel discussion tied to the recent “How the World Does Digital” report.
The advent of Pix, an instant-payment app launched by the Brazilian central bank in 2023, was a force that “lit up” Brazil, Genovez added.
“In many ways, Pix is the enabler for this impressive digital adoption in Brazil,” he said. “The gig economy, content creators, gaming, streaming services like Netflix or marketplaces like Mercado Libre, all of them need efficient payment infrastructure. So Pix is the backbone of this digital adoption in Brazil today.”
Also this week, PYMNTS examined the rise of digital wallets, noting that while they are gaining traction for features besides making purchases, transactions are still the most common use of this technology.
Research by PYMNTS Intelligence and Google Wallet found that 41% of consumers said they would likely use digital wallets to conduct financial transactions in the next year, slightly ahead of the 40% that said the same thing about storing and accessing payment methods.
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