The global giant of digital payments Visa has opened an innovation center in Kenya, the first in Africa and sixth globally, after outposts in Dubai, London, Miami, San Francisco and Singapore.
The center will bring together developers, internal and external customers of Visa and other partners to co-create payment and commerce solutions.
“Sub-Saharan Africa is a fast-growing region with a tech-savvy population. As we continue to increase the adoption of digital payments in the region, our aspiration is to deepen our collaboration with clients and partners in developing solutions designed around Africa's unique needs," said Visa Senior Vice President and Head of Africa. Sub-Saharan. , Aida Diarra.
“As a technology-based brand, Visa it has fueled the major technological advances that make electronic payments what they are today. We are confident that the innovation study will continue that legacy and cement Sub-Saharan Africa's position as a leader in creating turnkey solutions to address our most pressing challenges as a region,” said Diarra.
Visa has previously used its existing innovation centers to design products for the African market, including a collaboration with Nigerian Fintech Paga to develop new merchant acceptance solutions involving QR codes and NFC technology.
In the other innovation laboratories of Visa It also fostered a recent partnership with Kenya's Safaricom that enabled the telco's 150.000 mobile money (M-Pesa) merchants to accept card payments.
Across Africa, local and multinational corporations, as well as governments, are following suit in launching these innovation hubs as a means to develop new products through collaborations and to remain competitive globally.
Organizations such as Cisco and Philips also run similar labs in Nairobi, while the Kenyan government is building a tech city, Konza City, to boost innovation in the country.
Meanwhile, numerous innovation hubs have opened in Nigeria, Africa's start-up capital, concentrated in Lagos, the country's cultural and commercial hub, and home to the continent's big names, such as the tech jobs network Andela, the payment company Flutterwave and the Jumia e-commerce platform.
