Kulusu Chisola, CEO, Izwe Zambia.

Payments company ExiPay has partnered with financial services provider Izwe to launch Izwe Pay, an all-in-one point of sale (POS) device, with an initial focus on the Zambian market.

The parties announced today that the Izwe Pay POS can accept both mobile and card payments and provide additional financial services on a merchant terminal.

The companies say that research shows that while millions of Zambians use telephone or mobile banking, the bulk of the country's POS machines are not set up to accept these payments.

Izwe says: “Access to digital financial services increased from 48.9% in 2018 to 73.1% in 2022, according to the Zambia Information and Communications Technology Authority.

“Bank of Zambia statistics indicate that in 2022, the country had 4.89 million telephone banking account holders, and the majority of the 39 301 POS devices in the market did not process mobile payments.

“The adoption of mobile money in Zambia ballooned with active subscriptions increasing from 9.8 million in 2021 to 11.2 million subscribers in 2022, representing a growth rate of 13.98%.”

According to Izwe: “Traditional payment processes have lacked innovation and not provided the business tools businesses, especially SMEs, need to support their growth.”

Willie van Zyl, CEO, Izwe Group, adds: “The demand for versatile payment solutions has grown in Zambia, in line with more businesses and individuals moving to embrace digital payment methods, particularly mobile money solutions.”

To realise this solution, Izwe became both an investor and a client of ExiPay. According to the two, ExiPay integrated Izwe’s service requirements into a single POS terminal solution and oversaw the building of Izwe’s payments infrastructure.

The companies claim the POS solution includes integrations with banks, back-end portals, and connections to the national financial switch in Zambia.

Kulusu Chisola, CEO, Izwe Zambia, says: “With Izwe Pay, cashiers and customers don’t need multiple devices to process payments. It’s easy to train users to operate the Izwe Pay POS device and the system helps to standardise pricing across branches.”