However, iKaaz, a Bangalore-based mobile payments platform for enterprises in emerging markets has launched in the country to offer its innovative NFC-powered tap and pay services to Nigerian merchants and consumers, miraculously on their feature phones.
iKaaz has a tag which converts any phone into an NFC-enabled one for consumers while for merchants, it has a reader for them to plug into their mobile phones and turn them into mobile point of sales points. This gives a customer an NFC-enabled phone as long as they get the tag and the merchant, a reader to receive payments.
“It is encouraging to see that African partners are very interested in embracing NFC-based innovative mobile payments solutions. We are also extremely proud to have the opportunity to partner with FCMB Bank here in Nigeria,” said Soma Sundaram, Founder & CEO of iKaaz.
iKaaz provides a comprehensive suite of end-to-end mobile payments solutions that include a feature rich mobile wallet, an innovative – yet cost effective mPOS (mobile Point of Sale) and a robust payments platform that allows banks, operators and financial institutions to extend mobile payments to their customers in a fast, secure and cost effective manner.
Consumers use NFC tags that are linked to the mobile wallet similar to a debit card that is linked to bank accounts; while merchants on the other hand, will use iKaaz NFC mPOS to complete transactions all of which are processed by iKaaz’s robust payments platform.