VISA partners with Uganda Bankers Association to boost the uptake of Contactless payment solution.
Drake Nyamugabwa
Ugandan customers are to benefit from the partnership between VISA and Uganda Bankers Association (UBA) who have joined hands to grow a digital contactless payment eco-system, where customers will take advantage of the Contactless digital payments solution to effect card transactions with their merchants through a seamless, fast, and reliable financial technology without swiping their card through devices.
The merchants including supermarkets hospitals, fuel stations, and others, according to experts will only “activate the terminal and initiate payment for the cardholder to tap and complete the transaction at a close range” to enable fast transactions at an agreed limit.
Members of the UBA DFS Committee, VISA, Bankers, and Bank of Uganda representatives, among other partners, convened on Wednesday 19th July 2023 at Mestil Hotel in Kampala to deliberate on how to enhance the Contactless digital payment system on the Uganda market aimed at developing a road map that will lay a stronger foundation to increase the uptake of the solution.
The Executive Director while giving his remarks in order to effectively succeed in implementing new digital solutions, its important to embrace partnerships in the industry for customers to leverage on digital contactless payments.
He urged Customers, banks, merchants, and regulators to embrace new solutions that are secure, fast, and convenient by promoting them countrywide
“Embrace partners of innovation who brings new digital payment solutions to make It work. Let’s popularize Contactless to add value to the proposition. The success of the solution is its convenience, and security to enable customers to leverage the digital environment” he said
Salma Ingabire The Country Director VISA Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania said that contactless payment is the foundation of digital solutions insurance which she said reduces the cost of making transactions with merchants while creating a merchant network using a contactless-enabled virtual card system.
“Contactless payment is a merchant network with a virtual card to transact globally enabling interconnectivity of transactions to the future of the digital economy,” she said
She said that all players in the industry have a responsibility to contactless virtual card awareness which has proved to be safe, simple, and convenient to change people’s perspective on digital payments.
“The evolution of payments is going towards mobile; we need to create awareness to promote digital solutions. In Uganda there is a big chance of mobile payments a good opportunity to leverage on” she said
Salma added that “With the growth of payment solutions on mobile phones. It's prudent for banks to fast-match digital payments to move the card to the mobile phone”
In Eastern and Southern Africa, according to VISA, South Africa is the highest user of the contactless payment solution with a 50% penetration followed by Mauritius at 46%, Seychelles, Uganda at 1.4%, others include Kenya at 10%, Tanzania, and Rwanda among others. There are over 3 million credit and debit cards in Uganda, while Point of Sale activation is 10%
