Mobile money technology solutions provider VeryPay has developed a set of innovations that eliminate the various complexities associated with using both mobile money apps and USSD channels for payments.
This set of innovations come at a time when the spotlight is on bridging the huge usage gap in the digital space of the African continent, due to several factors including general lack of skills to manouvre the complexities therein – plus the security and safety concerns it poses to a greater majority of Africans.
According to GSMA, Africa accounts for over 70 percent of the world’s mobile money transactions. But it is not a secret that over 90 percent of mobile money users in Africa have difficulties using the Apps provided by the various e-money issuers, so they resort to the USSD channels which also come with their own complexities.
As a result, there is still a wide digital usage gap on the continent, with an attendant high exposure to risks as fraudsters continue to take advantage of people who are not digitally savvy.
Industry leaders and policymakers at the just-ended Mobile World Congress Africa 2023 in Kigali, Rwanda, therefore made it clear that one way to close the digital usage gap and leapfrog the risks they present is to create relevant solutions which are less complex and more friendly to the greater majority of Africans.
It is in line with this reality that VeryPay’s unique mobile money technology solutions which eliminate the complexities in payments with mobile money is a welcome innovation.
VeryPay provides a suite of very affordable tools – such as card and wrist bands provisioned with near field communication (NFC) technology and QR Codes – that users can connect to their mobile money wallets, load money on them and use them to touch and pay on equally affordable and portable VeryPay point of sale (PoS) devices.
This completely eliminates the challenge of having to always go through the process of accessing a mobile money App or USSD channel just to make payments.
The VeryPay affordable PoSs come in different sizes and can used by various categories of merchants – such as petty traders, roadside food vendors (like waakye sellers), taxi-drivers, trotro drivers, Uber/Bolt drivers, buses and many more.
In addition to removing the complexities from mobile money payments, it also helps to manage the risks because it gives the user a full view of whatever is happening on his/her wallet.
There’s more: The system even allows one wallet holder to deposit various amounts of money on various VeryPay devices and give them out to family for use. The original wallet holders will always be able to monitor what the money on each of the devices is being used for and by whom.
Through these innovative solutions, VeryPay has been driving financial inclusion among farmers in various developing countries – and other identifiable groups which would have been eliminated from the financial sector if not for the innovations VeryPay brings on board.
VeryPay’s Head of Sales-West Africa, Joseph Yendork, demonstrated how the VeryPay system works and noted that VeryPay is currently in talks with almost all mobile money operators and some FinTechs in Ghana as it gears up to roll out its solution in Ghana.
