Integrated payment markets to fuel future growth in Congo

A recently workshop on the Future of Money Transfers conducted by TerraPay in coordination with ARTF in Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire has revealed that Congo has only 13% of the population accessing banking services.

The share of electronic payments is less than 3% of total payments market in Congo. Yet service providers compete for the 3% share of the market rather than collaborate to capture the 97% dominated by cash. Cash is successful as it is fully interoperable and customers can use it anywhere. For electronic payments, to effectively compete with cash, they must be simple, interoperable, and easy to use and made for the consumer.

Educating small-scale players, who predominantly operate in cash, on benefits of moving money using mobile networks is often overlooked. It is not enough for banks and payment services providers to interconnect. Small remittance service providers form between 60% and 70% of the Congo’s money transfer market. These players need to be on-boarded to reduce incidence of cash usage.

The workshop ended with leading MNOs, banks and remittance service providers predicting interoperability can expand the contours of the current market.

TerraPay, a mobile-first international payment network, has been founded with the vision to send money to any mobile. Based in Netherlands TerraPay is incubated by Mahindra Comviva, a global leader in delivering mobility financial solutions, and is a part of the USD 16.9 billion Mahindra group.