Interswitch pushes novel Quickteller Business for SME growth across Africa
By Zainab Iwayemi
In a bid to empower small and medium businesses, facilitate payments, and manage transactions from anywhere in the world, Interswitch Group, one of Africa’s leading technology-driven company focused on the digitization of payments in Africa, has announced the launch of a new comprehensive corporate solution named Quickteller Business.
This development, complementing Interswitch’s existing Quickteller platform, is directed at broadening payment management capabilities to businesses and merchants of all sizes, by allowing them to access a wide range of integrated payment offerings, from disbursements to value financing, by creating a unique and differentiated offering with the potential to accelerate value creation for the benefit of large corporates, MSMEs and consumers through the over five million consumers already using Quickteller for retail payments in countries such as Nigeria, Kenya and Gambia.
According to a PwC survey, the last five years saw Nigeria’s vast SME sector contribute an average of 48 per cent to national GDP whilst also accounting for about 50 per cent of industrial jobs and almost 90 per cent of activities in the manufacturing sector.
Quickteller Business said it aims to capitalize on this to further expand the reach of Interswitch’s popular e-commerce solution to a broader audience of business users, helping to facilitate growth in the burgeoning SME sector across Africa and creating access to electronic payment systems for businesses that have the potential to increase the contribution of SME commercial activity in economies across the continent.
In addition, Quickteller Business will help African business owners prosper, by enabling access to effective and convenient digital payment and transaction solutions and technologies especially with the COVID-19 pandemic causing disruptions to businesses of all sizes around the world.
Meanwhile, as part of its offer launch, the new platform will offer a three-month zero transaction fee incentive for SMEs that sign up.
Akeem Lawal, divisional chief executive officer, payments processing at Interswitch Group said, “The SME sector is a potential game-changer for economic growth and development in Africa. Interswitch has been at the forefront of digital payment innovation across the continent, enabling individuals, businesses, and governments to transact more efficiently over the last 17 years.
“The evolution of our payment and e-commerce offerings into Quickteller Business represents a significant long-term shift in both our business and merchant operating model. Through the integrated platform, SMEs, financial services agents and large corporates can better navigate the challenges around payments collections, allowing them to focus on their core business with their diverse transaction needs taken care of through the versatility of the new Quickteller Business offering.
“The platform offers a comprehensive, integrated, payment solution that allows businesses to receive and track payments, generate e-invoices, as well as dispute management. It is an innovative and exciting payment solution that will benefit all business owners. Through this new offering, we are continuing our mission to make payments a seamless part of our everyday lives,” he added