WATCH: Payments scramble on for Africa

The prospect of a cashless Africa has triggered a scramble for control of its payments plumbing.

The continent’s top telecom operators have become big financial players thanks to their “mobile money” networks, which provide basic banking to tens of millions through handsets. If China is a guide, that could make them gatekeepers to a fintech revolution.

For the industry’s four big players — France’s Orange, SA’s MTN, Britain’s Vodafone and Airtel Africa, controlled by India’s Bharti Airtel — the pandemic affirmed the social importance of the service to the region’s billion people.

It’s also a reminder of the industry’s commercial fragility.

So what does the future of payments look like after the pandemic? To talk about this Michael Avery is joined by Thomas Pays, CEO and co-founder of Ozow; Corrie Bakker, who heads up the African continent for PayU; and Alastair Tempest, CEO of the Ecommerce Forum SA.