The partnership aims to enhance the capabilities of both companies and broaden the scale for card payments among new markets, delivering high-end technologies for card payments and driving digitalisation and financial inclusion.
By partnering with UPI, BankservAfrica takes a step forward in processing payments and covering the best interests of local communities. The companies will enable a marketplace that benefits all participants of the payments ecosystem, including SMEs, financial institutions, and retailers to help the local economy thrive and pave the path for a digital era of payments in South Africa.
Thorough the partnership, BankservAfrica will become the domestic processor of all UnionPay’s card issuing and acquiring services across its ecommerce payment channels, ATMs, and POS. UnionPay decided to partner with local existing infrastructures to support the country’s economic growth and scale the field of digital payments, aiming for a cashless economy.
At the same time, the partnership is consistent with the South African Reserve Bank’s goals to ensure sustainable and robust transaction processing on-soil in South Africa to support local payments infrastructures, drive lower costs and processing fees, and innovate card payments.
Leveraging the innovations and technologies of UPI, BankservAfrica has the opportunity to innovate the existing payment infrastructures and boost digitalisation and the overall adoption of card payments, providing a smooth customer experience.
The official press release mentions that UnionPay International is a subsidiary of China UnionPay and is the biggest card payments globally by number of transactions. It enables card acceptance in 181 countries and regions and issuance in 79 countries and regions. Its acceptance rate is over 85% in South Africa, driving digitalisation and card payments adoption.
At the same time, BankservAfrica is a trusted payments partner and Financial Markets Infrastructure (FMI) to the financial service industry. It aims to facilitate interoperability between banks and ensure regulatory compliance with active regulations against international banking security best practice and standards. BankservAfrica strives to be a strong payments operator, innovator, and partner, by providing safe financial payment services to more than 60 million South Africans. The company has over 50 years of experience and operates 24/7.
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