Visa and Safaricom, the East African telecom giant; have agreed on a deal that will connect M-Pesa financial offerings with Visa’s global network of merchants and cards.
Under the deal, which requires regulatory approval, M-Pesa’s 24 million users and 173,000 local merchants will be linked to Visa’s 61 million merchants and its more than 3 billion cards.
The mobile phone-based M-Pesa will serve as a virtual card, allowing users to make payments abroad when they travel and also letting them transfer cash from their Visa-linked debit cards to their M-Pesa wallet even when they are abroad, a source told Reuters.
Peter Ndegwa, Safaricom’s CEO, said in a joint statement that the deal will facilitate global electronic commerce, while Andrew Torre, President of Visa Central Europe, Middle East, and Africa, said it was committed to creating new and improved payments experiences.
“Safaricom and M-Pesa have already put Kenya on the map as a global leader in mobile money,” Torre said.
There have been attempts by governments to encourage the use of cashless payments to enhance security, while more recently they have been promoted as a way of slowing the spread of the coronavirus through banknotes.
M-Pesa, which was started by Safaricom in 2007, allows users to transfer cash, make payments for goods and services, as well as save and borrow through partnerships with local lenders.
Previous attempts to integrate it with the global payments system include a 2018 deal with Western Union, which allows M-Pesa users to send money around the world.
Visa has been partnering with African fintech startups in the past months. Recently it announced a partnership with Kenya’s Pesapal, bought a minority stake in African digital payments firm, Interswitch, and has also collaborated with Paga and PalmPay on payments and technology.
