WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2011-04-23 Time: 13:00:05 Posted By: News Poster
By Winfred Kagwe
The growing use of plastic money has attracted the two major payments solutions companies, Visa International and Mastercard to set up base in Kenya but unique features of this market could make the global giants review their penetration strategy in this region.
Even though cards have been in the market for over two decades, their uptake has been very slow compared to mobile money, which was introduced just four years ago, and the two have to either compete or partner with them.
Visa International has announced plans to open a new regional headquarter in Kenya to serve the Sub-Saharan region which is expected to be operational in June.
Last week Central Bank confirmed that MasterCard, Visa’s main competitor has applied to set up a base in the country.”Mobile technology introduces a unique opportunity to overcome historical challenges to deliver financial services to more than 1 billion consumers worldwide who own mobile devices but do not have a formal banking relationship,” says Jabu Basopo, Visa Head of Business Development, Sub Saharan Africa.
Such challenges include lack of physical distribution points for financial services such as bank branches lack of reliable power to support traditional banking and electronic payments which mobile money services , M-pesa, Airtel money, Orange money and yucash,have been able to overcome .”Mobile technology can extend Visa’s financial services network to unbanked populations in emerging markets. This enables Visa and its clients to deliver various service offerings based on Visa mobile prepaid accounts “says Basopo. Such services include Mobile Remote Transactions including bill pay, wireless airtime top-up and Mobile Money Transfer.
Already, Visa has partnered with Safaricom and I&M bank to offer the M-Pesa Prepay Visa Safari Card which gives the 13.5 million users of mobile money access over 28 million Visa outlets globally.
Earlier this year, MasterCard, Airtel and Standard Chartered Bank also launched a payment card to will allow Airtel money subscribers make payments across the MasterCard network.
Visa’s main goal is to increase card penetration and give consumers more places to use their debit cards yet Mobile money is already doing this through partnerships with supermarkets, hotels and other utility companies.
Original date published: 18 April 2011
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201104190128.html?viewall=1