Aida Diarra, senior vice president and head of Sub-Saharan Africa at Visa.

Africa’s digital payments landscape holds immense potential, with $1.3 trillion in cash transactions across the continent yet to be digitised.

This is according to Visa, which provided insights on the digital payments landscape in Sub-Saharan Africa during the Visa Security CEMEA Summit, held in Cape Town yesterday.

Aida Diarra, senior vice president and head of Sub-Saharan Africa at Visa, told ITWeb Africa that cash-based economic activities present a significant opportunity for merchants and consumers to digitise their operations, creating a multiplier effect to drive financial inclusion and economic development.

Diarra attributes Africa’s continued use of cash to various factors, primarily the restricted availability of digital payments, which impacts over 200 million people across the continent.

The primary factor holding back adoption is access, she said. "Technology is now offering us the possibility to better drive the access. We can now embed a card credential into a wallet to make a payment from your phone."

She added that the recent increase in reach of such solutions has led to an acceleration of digitised payments. “There is a 20% growth, year-on-year, of digital payments and it's driven by that (improved reach).

In addition to improving access, there’s a need to improve acceptance of digital payments too.

“In order to pay, you need to have merchants that accept payments, and here again, technology is a phenomenal driver; look at the merchant’s ability to use their phone as an acceptance device."

According to Visa, only eight million merchants on the continent accept digital payments, with 44 million still not heeding the call to transition to digital payments.

Diarra said Africa accounts for 70% of mobile money globally and players such as Fintechs, mobile network operators, micro-lenders, and e-commerce players are pushing the continent’s mobile first agenda.

When it comes to alternative digital payments solutions like cryptocurrency, she says the big African markets will have the first mover advantage because of the landscape they operate on, with markets like South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria already leading the pack in cryptocurrency usage, not only in Africa, but globally. She optimistically notes that because of the opportunity technology presents, other markets have room to leapfrog.

She explains: "A few years back, looking at landlines and the numbers of households that did not have access, and then with mobile telephony coming, we went past that and created further access.

“The big economies will probably lead the (cryptocurrency) charge. With this, cost comes down, technology becomes nimbler, and adoption would be accelerating in other markets.”

Because of the DNA of the ecosystem in some markets and challenges to access hard currency, crypto is leveraged in these markets to issue and make payments, Diarra said.

“This is something we need to continue to monitor, and that is likely to continue to grow. The good news is that regulators are beginning to appreciate this is a trend that’s here to stay, and that there needs to be proper rules and frameworks to make sure that they fully have visibility and continue to enable the use of such capabilities,” she concludes.