Mastercard collaborates with fintech company SAVA to help Africa's small businesses.

MasterCard and Johannesburg-based fintech business SAVA have teamed up to help small, medium, and micro enterprises (SMMEs) with modern payments technology and infrastructure.

The partnership will provide SMMEs in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, and Egypt with an online platform powered by SAVA's Payment Transaction System, which includes digital bank accounts and accounting integration tools.

SMMEs account for 60% of all jobs in Africa and up to half of GDP in some countries. However, they operate in a cash-based economy and face a financial shortage of $330 billion, according to the World Bank.

According to a MasterCard news release, the collaboration supports and reiterates its financial inclusion goal to bring 50 million SMMEs into the digital economy by 2025.

According to the statement, the technology will help SMMEs to simplify financial management and scale their business operations.

It adds: “As part of the agreement, the fintech player will provide SMMEs with virtual and physical cards where budgets can be pre-configured and managed via the SAVA app. By integrating the offering with their accounting packages, SAVA’s customers will be able to control and manage spend on their employee cards and save time and money by automating reconciliations.”

Dimitrios Dosis, president, EEMEA, MasterCard, comments: “Our new collaboration with SAVA represents an important step in our efforts to support small businesses that are key drivers of economic growth. By deploying the right, efficient technology we continue to boost financial inclusion in Africa and enable SMMEs to reap the full benefits of the digital economy.”

Kola Olajide, CEO, SAVA adds: “SAVA is now operating in Kenya and South Africa. Access Bank is our sponsor bank in South Africa, while Microsoft is a supporting partner in bringing our vision to life. We are grateful to the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) for believing in our vision and granting us the required approvals to launch in South Africa.”

In addition to addressing pain points around expense filing and management, SAVA says its solution can also be used to issue physical cards for shoppers and control spending from a central dashboard, eliminating the need for cash transactions.