Direct Pay Online Group, Kenya’s online payments firm formerly known as 3G DirectPay recently raised an undisclosed funding from Apis Partners LLP with plans to launch in over 10 new countries. True to its promise, immediately after the raise Direct Pay Online Group acquired South Africa’s online payments processor PayGate (Pty) Ltd for $7.3m to continue its pan-African expansion drive.
Offer Gat, the DPO Group Chairman said DPO Group aims to offer a wider range of products and services across the whole of East and Southern Africa, and the acquisition gave it a strong foothold in the large South African e-commerce market.
Gat added that with the deal, the Group will be in a better position to serve the growing number of African and global multinationals looking to serve consumers anywhere on the African continent. TechMoran caught up with Gat on the group plans for markets like Nigeria and West Africa as the firm continues to expand.
How important is South Africa as a market and PayGate to the new group?
For us, SA has a big potential. By adding PayGate to our group, who is already a big player in SA and works with thousands of merchants, it gives us the footprint we need in order to provide a unified payments solution for Africa as a whole. Having PayGate, who are experienced in SA, will enable us provide solutions to merchants in SA than would like to expand their businesses to other countries in the Pan African market.
Why is the group expanding to a larger market before satisfying and hitting a critical mass in East Africa?
The group strategy is to provide a unified payments solution all across Africa. SA is a major market and as a leading payments group we identified the opportunity and decided to generate this market now. In East Africa, after 10 years, we established ourselves as a leading payments services provider, it is true that this market is far from been a mature payments market, however, we sure that we will lead the market in the coming months to a new era where online payments are highly common.
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With limited airlines and hotels what’s the group’s immediate growth industry?
We are now expanding into other sectors and notably travel, like schools, insurance companies, ISP e-commerce, in terms of limitations.
Which country is the group launching in next and why?
We will be launching in Malawi, Ethiopia, Namibia, Nigeria, and Ghana. Why this countries — we believe there is a lot of potential in this markets to provide a complete payments solution.
Without local marker knowledge in new markets like Nigeria, will DPOG expand to and remain competitive there?
In a market like Nigeria will use the same strategy as in SA and will penetrate the market by acquisition.
Is the group open to more acquisitions in South Africa and in other markets?
Yes we are, watch the space for some good announcements in the coming months.
Some people are saying the new investor APIC is leading this acquisitions to create a huge online payments group because it has identified a buyer already. Is this true?
Our strategy is to build a leading Pan African payments service provider. A potential buyer is not something we looking at this phase.
What’s the group’s mobile payments plan now that some markets have no or little mobile payments platforms?
Mobile payments is an important part of our platform. However, it is another form of payments among others, we are processing all cards and in many markets this is the main form of payments used by the online consumers
