Safaricom partners Visa to launch GlobalPay Visa Virtual Card for customers

Kenya’s telecom giant, Safaricom has partnered with Visa Inc. to launch the GlobalPay Visa Virtual Card for it’s over 52 million M-Pesa payment system users’ in Kenya and Tanzania.

The newly introduced M-Pesa GlobalPay Visa virtual card will also allow users to make international online payments across Visa’s global network from the M-Pesa Super App.

According to officials, transactions will be billed at the prevailing foreign exchange rates on a daily basis subject to the M-Pesa platform’s current limits in the local Kenyan currency.

It’s expected that transactions on the virtual card will be secured through the generation of a unique security code, akin to the one on the back of Visa’s plastic cards, which will be sent to the user’s mobile phone when they are paying.

Users will then be required to use their M-Pesa pins every time they generate the secure code from Visa, enhancing security.

The Africa Managing Director at M-Pesa, Sitoyo Lopokoiyit noted during the product launch in Nairobi that fast-growing subscription markets in Africa for services like Netflix and Spotify are potential targets of the new GlobalPay virtual card.

He also revealed that the card following its success in Kenya and Tanzania will be introduced in other African countries including Ghana, Congo, Mozambique, and Lesotho.

M-Pesa, launched 15 years ago as one of the world’s first mobile phone-based money transfer services, has evolved to account for roughly half of Safaricom’s annual revenue. Through Visa’s digital processing network its users will now get access to more than 100 million merchants across 200 countries.

By: Kanto Okanta