Mastercard has partnered with Kenya’s Billetera to provide millions of residents in the Democratic Republic of Congo access to financial and digital payments services.
The partnership aims to support the vision of the DRC’s Government’s ambitious digitization program, the National Digital Plan (NDP).
“With only 22.5 million of DRC’s total population of 90 million being financially included within the nation’s financial system, access to banking and mobile money has become an important agenda for the government,” read a statement from Mastercard.
According to Digital 2020: The Democratic Republic of The Congo, 40% of the population in DRC had mobile connections by January 2020.
“We shall complement our software development capabilities with Mastercard’s latest technologies towards the digitization of the DRC government payments efforts which shall certainly lead to market disruption,” Jevis Omondi Okoth, CEO, Billetera.
‘As we continue to invest in innovative technologies & platforms, infrastructure and the right fintech partnerships that enable us to provide a single platform capability across multiple-use cases to our partners, we are confident this will boost our efforts in achieving our global commitment to bring 1 billion people into the digital economy by 2025. A partnership like this one will further the Democratic Republic of Congo’s prospects of growing financial inclusion in the country,’ said Arn Vogels, Area Business Head, Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa at Mastercard.