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NIGERIA:VCASH completes the wallet funding circle
VCASH completes the wallet funding circle by allowing subscribers and agents to fund their VCASH accounts using any card: Interswitch Verve cards, MasterCard cards or Visa card
All subscribers now have the option of funding their accounts or paying over 5,700 VCASH merchants using a Verve card, a MasterCard card or a Visa card.
LAGOS 9th May 2016: VTNetwork Limited (VTN), an industry trend-setting fintech and mobile payments operator in Nigeria, announced the option to subscribers to fund their wallets and pay over 5,700 merchants using an Interswitch Verve card, a MasterCard card or a Visa card.
“It’s about choice,” explained Peter Ojo, Chief Executive Officer, VTN, spoke of needing to get all interconnected to improve mobile payment adoption in Nigeria. “Interswitch, VISA and MasterCard are industry leaders, present in the Nigeria market with customers using their products. We say use your card account to fund your VCASH account in order to pay one of our merchants, or to preschedule airtime purchases, or in general, to learn what VCASH can do for you.”
Making cash digital is crucial in informal-sector economies and VTN’s newly announced inclusive approach leverages already-existing digital funds. This adds to the company’s existing infrastructure of agents, value-loading mechanism and is a “total funding circle” in that it includes options for the banked and unbanked and strengthens the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Cashless initiative and financial inclusion priorities. More Nigerians will participate more fully in an e-payment revolution in Nigeria.
On Security
Of the most recent integration, with Interswitch for funding with a Verve card, Ojo is confident the Verve card is secure. He should know, in 2005 he changed how prepaid debit cards get distributed globally by developing a secure algorithm that eliminated the need to mail prepaid debit cards. The solution is now in use by many corporations in the US and worldwide.
The OTP functionality on Verve cards makes transactions very secure because in order to complete a transaction, the user will receive a code on their phone in real-time which the user must enter to finalise the transaction. The OTP is important because the code will only be sent to the mobile number registered under the card. The one to one relationship between the card and the phone will almost eliminate fraud and opportunistic chargebacks which gives merchants peace of mind. This elegant and simple step is very practical for transactions over the internet.
Ojo said, "When we rolled out our service, the main funding focus was mastering how the unbanked can fund and we solved this problem by creating numerous options in use today without the need to have a bank account or debit cards in Nigeria. This is another piece of that solution. Our integration with the largest switch in Nigeria allows local debits cards to be used on our platform.”
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