Our mission is to help digitize daily spend and drive financial inclusion in Africa by offering modern innovative, quick to deploy technology that complements mobile wallet infrastructures.

How it began:

In 2019 SmartDev, a Verysell Group company was asked to scope, design, and build an NFC based contactless tap-and-go payment system, as a wallet companion solution, for a small Telco in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The challenge:

In emerging economies with poor banking infrastructure and high populations of non-banked or underbanked citizens, traditional Visa and Mastercard based tap and go payment solutions are simply not dominant. They are costly to implement and manage, have high associated fees and are therefore under-utilized.
Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) in emerging markets could benefit from offering subscribers the speed and convenience of tap and go based technology, to increase the usage and adoption of mobile money, but only if it could be offered without the high costs and the need for a bank account.
So, instead of replacing a digital wallet or any other payment solution, VeryPay sought to build modern technology that could extend an eWallet functionality for end-users.

The result:

The VeryPay platform combined several existing technologies in a new and novel way, to produce a unique and complementary payment solution. We named it a ‘wallet companion platform’. It increases the usage and adoption of existing mobile money solutions by enabling more consumers and merchants to digitise daily spend and can facilitate a move away from cash payments. The VeryPay mobile wallet companion platform was launched in the DRC in 2021.
Having spoken to many MNOs across multiple African countries, we learned that most are struggling to find ways to increase usage and adoption of mobile money and increase app downloads. Smartphone penetration levels vary between countries and have a big part to play, but Telco's are highly focused on accelerating this, as they compete to capture, retain, and grow their subscriber bases. Adding utility to mobile apps can further encourage the move to smartphones.

The opportunity to help scale mobile money

Scalability is arguably the most important factor in increasing the usage of digital money, alongside the ability for a payment solution to transcend all payment use-cases. This is necessary for any solution to be more compelling than cash. Building the required scale on both the consumer and merchant sides to achieve critical mass for adoption is challenging. Consumers won’t buy into a solution accepted by only a few merchants and the provider will not see much uptake from retailers until there is a large consumer base demanding the payment method.

Increased adoption of digital payments is essential in targeting the retail sector, which, in turn, is the most lucrative segment of the economy from the point of view of generating additional revenue for the MNO from its mobile money business. Approaching various types of users in different segments and regions based on one technological platform should be of critical importance to such large-scale MNOs looking to grow their mobile money footprint and rollout a more technically advanced, compelling system.

A carefully targeted approach is required when launching any new payment capability into a region. We work closely with our MNO partners to consider niche sectors and specific ecosystems where we can launch via carefully controlled pilot projects and demonstrate successful uptake prior to rolling out to the wider subscriber base.