Fintech News South Africa

Partnership creates pan-African online payment solution

The demand to do business in Africa has led to a partnership between two big players in the digital online payment space. East African online payment processor, Direct Pay Online (DPO), has bought a significant majority stake in South African service provider, PayGate, to create a pan-African presence.

“DPO has the simple vision of offering the freedom for people to make payments online anywhere, anytime. Africa is growing rapidly and there are more customers in South and East Africa paying online using cards or mobile money than anywhere else,” says Eran Feinstein, CEO of DPO.

The African ecommerce market is expected to be worth $50bn by 2018, providing a significant opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors.

L-R: Eran Feinstein, Offer Gat and Peter Harvey
L-R: Eran Feinstein, Offer Gat and Peter Harvey

“There’s a lot of demand in South Africa to do business in Africa. But Africa is not for sissies and it’s hard to do business here, but it is getting easier,” says Peter Harvey, managing director: PayGate.

The combination of 3G Direct Pay and PayGate under the Direct Pay Online Group will provide a single contact point for merchants looking to accept online payments across the continent.

The fact that DPO has offices across the continent also helps with the different regulatory issues in the different regions. Merchants will have access to 60+ DPO employees to provide bespoke development solutions and customer support in their local language; a single integration that offers their customers the broadest suite of payment options in Africa and world-class security and fraud prevention.

Offer Gat, the DPO group chairman adds that: “The merger with PayGate enables DPO to offer a wider range of products and services across the whole of East and Southern Africa, and provides the group with a strong foothold in the large South African ecommerce market. The group will be in a better position to serve the growing number of African and global multinationals looking to serve consumers anywhere on the African continent.”

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