Mastercard used this week's Mobile World Congress (MWC) event in Barcelona to announce it will use Facebook Messenger to provide technology to small businesses in Africa and Asia to drive affordable acceptance of electronic and mobile payments, with the first pilot of to take place in Nigeria.

Mastercard said the improved access to digital payments afforded by the new solution would help businesses expand to new markets, and unlock financial services and products that enable them to grow their livelihoods.

The Messenger experience will initially launch in Nigeria, where Mastercard will pilot a new Masterpass QR bot to help business owners move beyond cash to accepting QR payments.

The programme is supported Ecobank and Zenith Bank, with the Nigerian pilot signalling the start of a larger plan by the two companies to include more businesses into the digital economy.

"Every business owner is looking for ways to increase sales and draw new customers into their stores. By offering QR-based digital payments, smaller retailers can achieve these goals and create greater customer stickiness with little to no investment beyond the phone they already have," said Jorn Lambert, executive vice president for digital channels and regions at Mastercard.

"Masterpass QR opens up new commerce channels for these merchants and enables them to create auditable transaction records. These advances open doors to other financial tools and products such as loans to drive added business growth."

To get started, businesses can send a request to the bot to enable QR payments, receive approval from the bank, set up an account and start accepting digital payments. Once the account setup process is complete, business owners can print and display the QR code in their stores or save the code on their phones.

Customers can then pay by either scanning the code from their smartphone or by entering the merchant ID associated with the QR code into their feature phone.

"Brands and developers around the world are turning to messaging to connect with the 1.3 billion people who use Messenger each month," said Kahina Van Dyke, director of payments and financial services partnerships at Facebook. "We are pleased that Mastercard is developing a service on the Messenger platform to help small merchants use messaging to manage their business and connect with their customers."

Patrick Akinwuntan, group executive at Ecobank, said the partnership was in line with his bank's objective of serving 100 million Africans by the end of 2020.

"Ecobank is delighted to collaborate with Facebook and Mastercard to enable underserved and unbanked micro-merchants with the opportunity to open an Ecobank account almost immediately and begin to receive instant payments using Ecobank Masterpass QR on the Facebook Messenger platform," he said.

"Micro merchants in Nigeria are already benefiting from Masterpass QR and it will soon be in 32 markets across Africa, enabling them to move away from cash. That is true economic empowerment."