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.
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