Gigabit January 2019

Tipping the scale
on mobile payments
By Mark Elliott, Division President, Mastercard Southern Africa
The app economy has changed the way we live. We depend
on our smartphone apps for everything from entertainment
to photography, to messaging, personal productivity and
ordering transport or accommodation. In South Africa, we’re
increasingly using our smartphones for in-app, in-store and
online payments.
“The promise of mobile payment
services lies in creating safer,
richer experiences for consumers
and merchants.”
We’re also seeing merchants use apps that turn their
smartphones into point of sale devices or use QR codes to
accept mobile payments from their customers. The mobile
device brings the convenience, safety and customer choice
associated with cashless transactions to spaza shops, flea
market stalls, trades people like plumbers and electricians,
and other sectors where traditional card terminals are not a
practical or affordable solution.
Mobile innovations need to
improve the consumer experience
As we think about the rapid adoption of mobile payments,
the promise of mobile payment services lies in creating safer,
richer experiences for consumers and merchants. The key
is not to simply recreate what you could do before, but to
make paying for things simpler, safer and faster. That’s why
connecting with consumers wherever they are and whenever
they want is critical.
Imagine, for example, a world where people don’t need to
queue for hours to send money to their families in the rural
areas or where no one needs to withdraw cash from an ATM
and then stand in a long queue at a retailer on a Saturday
to pay a rates bill. They don’t even need to log in to online
banking and input a lot of payment information. Instead,
they’ll be able to scan a QR code on the statement and pay
from an app. This is a world where merchants don’t need
to keep large amounts of cash on their premises. It’s one
where consumers demand convenience and control, and
expect payment experiences to make their lives better.
We are not talking about a distant future, either. In South Africa,
more than 900,000 ratepayers in the City of Ekurhuleni
can pay their municipal bills online with their smartphones,
using Masterpass, our global digital payment service. Masterpass
is also accepted online by a growing list of merchants
of all sizes as well as in-app for convenient air and
data mobile top-up.
Partnerships key to drive
mass digital payment adoption
The consumer experience is simple, but there is a lot of
complexity in the background. Without collaboration across
industries to ensure that digital payments systems are
secure and interoperable, it will be impossible to deliver the
experiences consumers demand or to scale mobile payments.
That’s why we are collaborating with key players to develop
and deliver new consumer propositions that span multiple
industries across multiple channels – in-store, in-app and
online.
One example is the partnership between Mastercard and
Entersekt to enable Nedbank’s customers to make QR payments
to Masterpass, Pay@, SnapScan, and Zapper merchants
and billers through the Nedbank Money app, whether
they are paying online or at a physical point of presence.
This market-first development means that Nedbank Money
users need just one smartphone app for all major domestic
scan-to-pay services, rather than needing to store card data
in multiple apps, and they will be able to use biometrics as
an authentication method.
FIND OUT MORE: VISIT WWW.MASTERCARD.CO.ZA