Visa, the world leader in digital payments, showcased key innovation capabilities that will accelerate financial inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa. Hosting industry stakeholders at an event focused on innovation, the company highlighted co-creation as an essential component in developing market-ready payment solutions to accelerate access to financial services.

Speaking during the 2021 Visa Africa Innovation for Inclusion Summit, Aida Diarra, Senior Vice President & Group Country Manager for Sub-Saharan Africa at Visa, said that over the last decade Visa has taken a keen focus in collaborating with key players across the payments landscape to enable access to digital payments. “We continue to partner with leading players in Sub-Saharan Africa including banks, fintechs, neobanks and telecommunications companies to enable new payment experiences that accelerate inclusion across the region,” said Diarra.

“Some of our latest partnerships are leveraging the power of mobile as an access point to financial inclusion, including a partnership to develop products that will expand access to digital payments at scale for over 30 million mobile money customers. We are also driving access for small businesses through the launches of tap to phone and an exciting pilot that will serve as a solution to help small business owners digitize their business, covering payments, point of sale and access to credit, via a mobile device”, she added.

Visa’s Head of Innovation and Product Design, Central Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEMEA). Akshay Chopra, spoke about the capabilities necessary to accelerate future payment experiences and solve real consumer and merchant needs.

“To foster real inclusion we need tangible, customer-centric solutions that, with our innovation and design centre capabilities, our partners have a chance to engage with key trends and the latest Visa technologies through a number of design processes to identify where the gaps and opportunities are,” said Chopra.

“The pandemic has challenged us to think of new ways to still deliver on our innovation mandate. Since the onset of COVID-19, we have delivered over 120+ engagements remotely, through our team that has built deep expertise in running productive engagements regardless of location” he added.