Visa has opened a new innovation studio in Nairobi, Kenya to serve as the first dedicated innovation site in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The American multinational digital payments giant has operated innovation centers since 2016 and this Nairobi facility is the sixth in a network around the globe with the others located in Miami, London, Singapore, Dubai and San Francisco.
Fintech service providers are increasingly becoming aware of Africa’s potential and the Head of Visa in Sub-Saharan Africa, Aida Diarra framed their move this way,
“Sub-Saharan Africa is a fast-growing region with a tech-savvy population. As we continue to grow digital payments adoption in the region, our aspiration is to deepen our collaboration with clients and partners in developing solutions that are designed around the unique needs of Africa.”
The new studio has been designed as a melting pot that will bring together developers, Visa’s internal and external clients, and other partners in a supportive environment to co-create payment and commerce solutions. Given how seriously the pandemic showed the need for digital finance solutions, the studio comes as a timely resource to strengthen the capacity to develop these fintech products.
During the launch, Aida Diarra who doubles as Senior Vice President at Visa is quoted saying,
“As a brand built on technology, Visa has driven the major technology advancements that make electronic payments what they are today. We are confident that the innovation studio will continue that legacy and cement Sub-Saharan Africa’s position as a leader in creating out of the box solutions to deal with our most pressing challenges as a region.”
In the past, VISA has used its existing innovation hubs to design products for the African market with collaborations including one with Nigerian Fintech, Paga, to develop QR code based acceptance solutions for the mobile money payments company and a recent partnership with Kenya’s Safaricom allowing the country’s largest telecom provider to accept Visa card payments at 150,000 mobile money (M-Pesa) merchants across the country.
While talk of crypto seems to strike fear in some of the old financial service providers, Visa has gone the opposite direction insisting that a bridge between old and new technology is the best way for crypto to realize its full potential.
Since the formation of their Crypto Product Team in 2019, Visa has had the goal of connecting the emerging verified crypto wallets and platforms to their network of over 70 million merchants and vendors across the globe.
Merchant solutions will thus continue to be a key focus of the Nairobi Innovation Studio with a virtual card said to be in the works. In a collaboration with over 65 crypto wallet partners, this virtual card will enable Sub-Saharan cryptocurrency holders to make payments to merchants who ordinarily do not ordinarily accept crypto but accept Visa payments.
In addition to making payments, the virtual card is to be linked to a bank account for merchants to be able to request a loan based on their transactions. With all of this implemented on blockchain technology, the loan approval process could be sped up in a secure and verified environment.
Following the official opening of this studio, governments across Africa and multiple local and multinational corporations are looking to such innovations as a way to develop new products and maintain a competitive edge on this new frontier that is Web3.