Visa and Senegal's Ministry of Telecommunications and Digital Affairs have signed a two-year memorandum of understanding covering digital payments, innovation, cybersecurity and regulatory matters, according to an announcement published by Finextra. It is Visa's first such agreement with a government body in the country. The work will look at payments from citizens to government and from government to citizens. The partnership is linked to the national digital transformation programme, the New Deal Technologique.

What it means: Payments between citizens and the state are one of the most rewarding areas to digitise, because they touch almost the whole population and replace cash, queues and manual reconciliation. For Visa, agreements like this open doors in markets dominated by telecom operators' mobile money, where cards have low penetration. A memorandum is not yet a project with a budget, so the real effect will depend on the programmes that follow. Greece's experience shows the value of this direction: paying taxes, fees and fines by card or instant transfer, and paying benefits into bank accounts, have cut cash use and administrative costs considerably. At the same time, the choice between international card schemes and public instant payment solutions, such as IRIS in Greece, matters for transaction costs and for who controls the infrastructure. For Greek software firms offering e-government solutions in other countries, agreements like this create openings to partner on delivery projects.

Read the original on Finextra

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