South Africa-based Nedbank and Mastercard partners on WhatsApp payments to enable transactions for small businesses according to a recent media report.
To help small businesses customers make payments via WhatsApp, Nedbank and Mastercard partnered with the local fintech Ukheshe to achieve this. Once small or micro businesses are registered, they can access the service called Money Message that will enable them to send a request-to-pay message on WhatsApp to the customers with a valid identity document and bank account from South Africa.
Registering to avail of the services for the first time will be done via SMS prompts. The users can register with their name and card details then make payments within WhatsApp through their mobile number or a QR code. The account holder then needs to upload their photograph to help prevent identity theft. Nedbank stated that the need to verify the person registering for Money Message is a part of its compliance with financial regulations in South Africa to match with the ID or Passport with the selfie uploaded. This system is said to be in a beta run with a small group of micro-merchants for a month now and is expected to gradually expand.
Chipo Mushwana, executive, emerging payments of Nedbank, addressed the media and said, “Money Message looks to overcome a variety of cost, security and technical barriers by enabling micro-merchants and their customers to transact with each other easily on an existing platform, which is WhatsApp.”
The features of the payments include creating bills and sharing them with the customers in WhatsApp and linking bank accounts to the service to receive payments through a secure Masterpass connection along with making payments by scanning QR codes in WhatsApp.