Mastercard, Nedbank, and Ukheshe have launched Third-Party Processing Services (TPP) in South Africa which will give everyday businesses access to prepaid and virtual cards.
Clayton Hayward, CEO of Ukheshe, says that through Ukheshe’s innovative payment solutions, businesses in South Africa can now issue virtual prepaid cards to employees or customers. Providing recipients with improved financial freedom where they have the option to earn rewards, incentives, and have a secure card that can work anywhere in South Africa while building brand association.
Ukheshe will leverage Mastercard Processing, which enables it to launch secure prepaid payments programs to its customers with greater speed, flexibility, and convenience.
Through this new relationship, prepaid products will be processed through Mastercard’s platform which represents the latest in state-of-the-art processing solutions, with safety and security as top priorities.
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The platform is expected to help businesses quickly expand their payments portfolios across business channels efficiently and with minimal infrastructure investment.
“From providing a path to financial inclusion to the underserved to acting as a safer, more convenient payment option while traveling, or enabling people to shop online, prepaid payments have a broad appeal and room for growth in South Africa. For businesses, this offers a more secure and trackable way to pay for things. It will also help to eliminate fraud while also making arduous administration tasks much easier to manage and reconcile,” says Hayward.
He says that digital payments are both safe and efficient and is becoming more widespread, as more emerging economies, including South Africa, adopt a post-cash mindset, curbing the high indirect costs and unnecessary risks, and harness the power of digital and mobile payment technologies to drive economic growth and financial inclusion.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly fast-tracked the uptake of digital payment methods and normalized its usage by necessity,” said Hayward. “These cards are another significant step forward in overcoming the obstacles that many of South Africa’s unbanked face.”
