Innovation, partnership, and co-creation key to driving digital payment growth in Sub-Saharan Africa

Aida Diarra, Senior Vice President and Head of Sub-Saharan Africa at Visa.

The last decade has seen enormous growth in digital technology, including payments. Innovation and technological advances are bringing exciting opportunities for financial inclusion to the fore. Technology is now a tool to leapfrog over old processes, systems, and protocols for the benefit of everyday consumers. This leap forward has been accelerated by the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced us to shift our behaviours and adopt more technology to assist with our day-to-day lives in all aspects, including our finances.

As a result, the payments segment has grown rapidly in Sub Saharan Africa, mainly due to the high demand for financial inclusion. Today Visa, the world leader in digital payments, has become the connective tissue to enable new payment and commerce experiences by co-creating with all players in the payments sector – including fintechs, neobanks and wallets – to enable new payment experiences across the region. We have always been an enabler of invention and have constantly innovated to meet market needs over the years — from credit, debit and prepaid to mobile and IoT – to enable new payment experiences across the region. Our business and technology strategies have enabled us to become a leader in electronic payments over the last six decades. Despite this great success, an estimated $17 trillion of cash and checks are still in use globally, and nearly 2 billion adults lack access to formal financial services, providing huge opportunities for Visa and the greater industry to rally around standards (e.g., QR, eCom/mCom) and capabilities that will broaden access to electronic payments.