Cellulant, a leading payments technology company, aims to change how
businesses in Africa make and receive payments by introducing online and
offline payment solutions.
The payments market in Africa is experiencing rapid growth, mainly due
to advancements in peer-to-peer (P2P) and consumer-to-business (C2B) payment
solutions. However, the fragmentation of payment processing continues to pose a
significant challenge for businesses seeking to establish a presence in Africa.
Solving intractable
problems is not new to Cellulant; founded at the height of Africa’s mobile
technology boom in 2003, Cellulant is building Africa’s most comprehensive
payments infrastructure.
The company offers a single API payment platform that enables businesses
to collect payments online and offline while allowing anyone to pay from their
mobile money, local and international cards, or bank.
Providing alternative payment methods for African consumers is
particularly important on a continent that holds 70% of the world’s $1 trillion
mobile money market. Card penetration sits at a 3% penetration rate - meaning
global companies looking to expand into Africa need a payments partner that can
offer alternative payment methods for the local market.
At the recently
held 25th Annual Harvard Africa Business Conference in Boston, Cellulant’s
Group CEO Akshay Grover stated that Solving
the payments challenges in Africa is not just about payments but accelerating
global economic growth. Africa's dynamic economies and lack of an established
payment infrastructure have resulted in a unique occurrence on the continent.
On the one hand, this has prompted the growth of payment platforms and
solutions to meet the various needs of businesses and consumers, turning Africa
into a centre of innovation in the payments sector.
“On the other hand, with multiple
providers, a wide range of payment methods exists due to the absence of a
consistent infrastructure enabling businesses to collect payments seamlessly or
easily operate across borders. Therefore, a payments infrastructure in Africa
must holistically address the needs of businesses and their consumers by making
it easy to collect payments online and offline -regardless of the size of the
business,” he said.
Cellulant has
built, Tingg, a payments platform that provides multinational and international
businesses with a one-stop-shop solution for their payment needs across the
continent. The payments gateway connects to over 370 payment methods from
mobile money operators and banks across the continent to global and regional
card switches such as Visa, Mastercard, NIBSS and Verve.
The payments
platform has full-stack offline and online payment capabilities. It caters to
businesses in various sectors, such as Airlines, Telecoms, E-commerce,
Ride-Hailing, Retail, and Remittances, enabling these businesses to deliver a
frictionless payment experience to their customers. Today, Cellulant powers
payments for renowned global companies such as Emirates, Bolt, KLM, Ethiopian
Airlines, Glovo, Kenya Airways, and Jumia; and processes billions of dollars
yearly.
