Global digital payments giant Visa and East Africa’s biggest telecom Safaricom, the operator of the M-Pesa mobile money product, have today launched a virtual card, enabling millions of M-Pesa users to make digital payments globally, and giving Visa extended reach across Africa.
The launch of the M-Pesa GlobalPay Visa virtual card follows a partnership between the two companies forged in 2020 to develop “products that will support digital payments for M-Pesa customers.”
The virtual card will enable 30 million M-Pesa users to make cashless payments at Visa’s global network of merchants. Users can activate the virtual card through the M-Pesa mobile app or by USSD. Previously, M-Pesa users could only make mobile money payments within M-Pesa’s network of nearly 400,000 merchants.
