Some months ago, MTN announced a new payment initiative that has been launched in South Africa in collaboration with Standard Bank and Nedbank (Read here). The technology utilised in this product uses SIM cards and PIN entry to turn mobile phones into secure encrypted point-of-sale terminals.

In a related announcement, Paygate (one of the largest online aggregators in South Africa), announced that they will allow PayD (Read here). This opens up a large merchant community (ranging from major airlines to smaller retailers) for consumers that have registered their debit cards with PayD.

In order for this service to succeed it is now important to make it available to a large community of subscribers, for the subscribers to sign up to the service and to use it in earnest. The transaction volumes will ultimately dictate if this service will be seen as successful or not. It will take dedicated attention and some smart marketing initiatives to drive transactions.

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