See Multichoice’s plan to penetrate Africa’s fintech space

• MultiChoice Group establishes the fintech joint venture 'Moment' to create an integrated payment platform for Africa. 
• 'Moment' aims to provide expanded payment infrastructure for businesses across Africa, making payments easier, quicker, and more affordable. 
• The long-term goal of 'Moment' is to promote digital transactions, reduce dependency on cash payments, and improve financial inclusion for underbanked or unbanked consumers in Africa.

The parent company of DStv, SuperSport, and other media properties, MultiChoice Group, is establishing a new fintech joint venture with the goal of creating an integrated payment platform for Africa.

The joint venture comes as MultiChoice attempts to expand its operations and will run under the newly established firm and brand named Moment. The tough economy and a slew of new streaming competitors that are providing consumers with a substantially increased variety of viewing alternatives are putting increasing pressure on the group's mainstay pay-television sector.

‘Moment’ will combine the yearly payment processing of MultiChoice Group, which totals US$3.5 billion (R69 billion). ‘Moment’ offers expanded payment infrastructure for businesses across Africa to help them collect and make payments easier, quicker, and more affordable in any manner that their buyers or suppliers prefer,” the group stated.

“Moment will also offer additional options for consumers to spend and save money more wisely. The aim is to transform the African payments landscape by making digital payments more accessible and reliable for domestic, cross-border, and global payments,” it added.

Calvo Mawela, CEO of MultiChoice Group, stated that the joint venture will “address the need for an accessible and reliable payment platform for many small businesses and millions of consumers in Africa”.

“Investing in this venture is a logical progression for us, as we already process payments every month from 22 million households across 50 countries. Moment fulfills our strategy to expand our ecosystem by investing in adjacent businesses that provide scalable services, underpinned by technology,” Mawela said.

According to MultiChoice, the longer-term goal is to lessen dependency on cash payments by providing the infrastructure for pan-African payments for the 44 million small companies operating on the continent. “Moment aims to make digital transactions more accessible to the 350 million consumers that are underbanked or not banked at all,” the company said.

'Moment' eventually plans to collect, disburse and manage risk by providing payments across more than 40 countries and hundreds of payment methods. It aims to promote the use of PayShap from South Africa and comparable real-time payment systems. Additionally, it intends to enable importers and exporters global-African trade with virtual accounts in more than 40 different currencies and local payments in more than 130 nations.

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