Mastercard, OPay partner to grow cashless ecosystem

Mastercard and fintech company OPay have announced a strategic partnership. In the first phase of the collaboration, OPay customers from countries such as Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Pakistan, South Africa and the UAE will benefit from Mastercard’s virtual payment solution linked to their OPay wallets, enabling them to shop at brands for leisure, travel, accommodation, entertainment, streaming services and more.

The service is available regardless of whether or not the customer has a bank account. It also allows small business owners to purchase from suppliers abroad and pay with the secure virtual payment solution.

Amnah Ajmal, executive vice president for Market Development, Mastercard EEMEA, said: “At Mastercard, our innovation strategy is rooted in partnerships to support inclusion at scale. Our partnership with OPay demonstrates our commitment to supporting payments providers across the world to create an interconnected global payments ecosystem that benefits an array of consumers with unique needs.”

Yahui Zhou, CEO of OPay, said: “As the leading fintech in the Middle East and Africa, we are delighted to be partnering with Mastercard as we continue on our journey to promote financial inclusion, helping to open up the global economy to more consumers and businesses across Middle East and Africa.”

Launched in 2018, OPay’s active users have grown to 15 million in dozens of markets in which it operates. The company processes millions of transactions per day on average.

Plans are in place to launch OPay services in other markets in the next three to five years, significantly driving the growth of digital inclusion and digital commerce, while at the same time widening OPay customer inclusion into the global economy.

In other news, Dubai-based banking tech unicorn Zeta and Mastercard signed a five-year global partnership. As part of the agreement, the firms will go-to-market jointly to launch credit cards with issuers worldwide on Zeta’s modern, cloud-native and API-ready credit processing stack. Mastercard has also invested in Zeta to bolster the partnership.

Read: Dubai tech unicorn Zeta and Mastercard announce partnership