FOCUS ON AFRICA: TRANSPORT Well on their way: Payments are improving Africans’, and Africa’s, economic prospects
Hakuna matatu Better social mobility is the greatest gift payments can give Africa’s people, says BPC's Frank Molla 66
ThePaytechMagazine | Issue 12
In a nation developing as rapidly and diversely as Africa’s, the importance of being able to get around with ease and grasp opportunities for work and general self-improvement as they materialise, cannot be underestimated. Which is why digital payments platform BPC has invested significant effort into enabling that through increasingly seamless payments technology, including an initiative involving 10,000 of Kenya’s colourful and iconic matatu ‘disco buses’. In a country known for its hit-and-miss IT and physical infrastructure, mobile phones have taken the lead, over recent years, as facilitators of both lifestyle and the payments it relies on. As such, they provide a vital route to financial inclusion for millions. In fact, Kenya National Bureau of Statistics data shows that, in this country alone, the value of mobile money transactions surged by 63.2 per cent, to KSh15.3trillion (US$0.13trillion), in 2021, compared to KSh9.392trillion (US$0.08trillion) in 2020; while the total number of mobile money transactions completed rose by 16 per cent to 2.165 billion. This is coinciding with a number of infrastructure projects to help people physically get around and improve their financial lot, including the building of expressways linking major towns and cities. These, too, have the potential – and need – to be powered by seamless payments using the various mobile-first options the population are now so comfortable with, according to BPC managing director Frank Molla. At the same time, the disparate nature of the African continent means one size does not fit all, and solutions must be tailored to the individual needs of its different markets. For example, in Kenya, 70 per cent of the 54 million-strong population are dependent on buses, and payments have a key role to play in boosting financial inclusion by enabling people to get from A to B for work and other purposes, through seamless, electronic ways of paying. However, while Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole may have been responsible for 64 per cent of the estimated US$2.1billion in daily global transactions via mobile money platforms in 2020, according to the mobile operators trade body, GSMA, 57 per cent of Africans, or 360 million adults, still didn’t ffnews.com
