MasterCard Incorporated, the second-biggest United States payment network, is working with the Federal Government to issue 13 million debits cards in Nigeria, which will also act as identity cards, the President, International Markets, MasterCard, Ms. Ann Cairns, has said.
The company has distributed 10 million South African debit cards that replace cash for social grant recipients, thus boosting its market share across the Africa’s fastest-growing economy.
She spoke in an interview in Pretoria, South Africa, saying the company was also expanding in Angola and Mozambique and working with local partners such as Kenya’s Equity Bank Limited for growth, a Bloomberg report said on Wednesday.
MasterCard is counting on the expansion in Africa and the rising levels of wealth to distribute its financial products to more than 200 million people that have no access to banking services, according to McKinsey & Co Mobile operator, South Africa’s MTN Group Limited.
MTN and banks such as Togo’s Ecobank Transnational Incorporated were also trying to reach the Africa’s poorest by offering easier access to bank accounts and the ability to transfer money without going into a branch, the report said.
“We think financial inclusion can be brought by different instruments,” Cairns said.
MasterCard will be able to realise the “big promise of Africa” if it can grow its payment systems, MasterCard’s President of Middle East and Africa, Michael Miebach, said in the same interview, according to the report.
Meanwhile, Access Bank Plc on Wednesday said its half-year pre-tax profit fell by 14 per cent to N26.1bn.
The figure represents a 14 per cent fall from the same period a year ago, according to the bank.
Gross earnings also declined by five per cent to N104.1bn during the six months to June 30, according to the top-tier bank’s filing at the Nigeria Stock Exchange.
- The Punch