Nigerian fintech startup, Wallets Africa, has sealed a partnership global payments giant, Visa, to launch debit cards for its customers across Nigeria.
According to Techpoint, Wallets Africa will be extending its services to reach a wider audience in Nigeria after establishing a relationship with Visa. Further, the partnership will see the introduction of prepaid naira cards to allow customers to withdraw cash at ATMs and make payments at POS terminals.
Both cards — virtual and physical — will be aimed at business users who hope to initiate local transactions as well as international transactions. Also, they’ll be able to make offline payments as well.
While the company was already issuing virtual Visa cards with its card technology, physical Visa cards needed to come into play because of the customer’s Wallets Africa couldn’t reach. This is more direct as opposed to integrating with this, integrating with that. What we’ve done is a direct thing to the big switch, to Visa in this case. So we’re very psyched about it.”
Franklin Ugobude, Wallets Africa Digital Marketing manager
Wallets Africa users can now access physical and virtual Verve and Visa cards from the company. Additionally, Techpoint report that the company will deliver them in less than two weeks and users can make withdrawals with the dollar cards from any bank ATM in the country.
“The Wallets Africa team has made tremendous progress in a short time. I am impressed with the fact that they’ve successfully enabled Visa prepaid cards that work everywhere to thousands of digital natives and entrepreneurs in Nigeria. I look forward to seeing what they’ll do in other African countries soon.”
Otto Williams, VP, Fintech Partnerships of Visa
In September, Wallets Africa began issuing virtual dollar cards to its users, enabling them to buy items and courses, and make payments for subscriptions and tools online.