By Vaughan O’Grady
A subsidiary of Safaricom Ethiopia, Safaricom M-Pesa Mobile Financial Services and Ethiopian payment solution provider Chapa Financial Technologies Share Company have entered into a partnership agreement to provide M-Pesa services for entrepreneurs, businesses and government services on Chapa’s payment aggregator platform.
This partnership, say the companies, aims to boost the ease of transactions for both merchants and M-Pesa customers in the Ethiopian market.
Through this agreement, merchants using Chapa’s payment gateway system can receive payments from Safaricom M-Pesa customers and M-Pesa customers can make quick and secure payments to merchants on Chapa’s checkout.
General Manager of Safaricom M-Pesa Mobile Financial Services PLC, Paul Kavavu says: “Chapa is one of the rapidly growing payment system operators in Ethiopia and partnering with them complements our goal of making M-Pesa available everywhere.” He adds: “The digitisation process in Ethiopia has picked up momentum and such partnerships further enhance the ease with which people make their transactions.”
For Chapa, this partnership is an opportunity to expand its customer base and provide a broader range of payment solutions to its merchants. Becoming a merchant with Chapa, says the company, involves a streamlined, fully online onboarding process, ensuring ease and convenience every step of the way.
As the drive to gain market share continues, Safaricom Ethiopia may now be in a better position than it had hoped as, for the foreseeable future, its only competition will come from state-owned incumbent Ethio Telecom. As we reported recently, Ethiopia has cancelled the process of issuing a third telecoms licence.
