Pay-TV group MultiChoice, payments platform Rapyd and venture capital General Catalyst have formed a joint venture, called Moment, aimed at developing an integrated payment platform for Africa.

The trio announced the formation of Moment yesterday in a statement. The ambition of the joint venture is to transform the African digital payments landscape by making domestic, cross-border and global payments more accessible and reliable.

Rapyd offers a Fintech-as-a-Service platform to integrate local payment and fintech capabilities into existing systems. Its features include multicurrency payment acceptance, accounts payable solutions, and wallet-based payments.

Venture capital firm General Catalyst invests in seed-stage, early-stage, later-stage, and growth-stage companies operating in consumer, enterprise, fintech, crypto, health assurance, software, transportation, big data, and technology sectors.

With Moment, the group says it will offer expanded payment infrastructure for businesses ‘across Africa to help them collect and make payments easier, quicker, and more affordable in any manner that their buyers or suppliers prefer’.

Moment will also consolidate the $3.5 billion payments that the MultiChoice Group processes annually to expand options for subscribers and make payment processes efficient.

“Investing in this venture is a logical progression for us, as we already process payments every month from 22 million households across 50 countries in Africa. Moment fulfills our strategy to expand our ecosystem, by investing in adjacent businesses that provide scalable services, underpinned by technology,” says Calvo Mawela, MultiChoice Group CEO.

Mawela adds that the company will address the need for an ‘accessible and reliable’ payment platform for ‘many small businesses and millions of consumers’ in Africa.

The long-term plan for Moment is to provide the infrastructure for Pan-African payments for the 44 million small businesses operating on the continent.

It’s also planned that Moment will make digital transactions more accessible to 350 million unbanked or underbanked consumers across the continent.

Arik Shtilman, CEO of Rapyd, comments: “Africa is one of the most exciting markets in the world – with tremendous opportunities to expand the use of digital payments, drive cash payments to real-time digital payments, and to capitalise on the tremendous entrepreneurial drive of African businesses."

“Africa represents one of the most exciting investment opportunities for global investors. Over the next 20 years, most of the population growth of the world will be happening in Africa, along with increasing urbanisation. African consumers and businesses are not only moving business online, but will be the labour force for the world across the next 20 years,” adds Adam Valkin, managing director at General Catalyst Partners