Visa has expanded access to Visa Pay for additional financial institutions across Africa through a new software development kit (SDK), enabling banks, mobile money operators and fintech companies to integrate digital payment capabilities into their existing mobile applications more quickly and securely.

The expansion covers several African markets, including Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Tanzania and Sierra Leone.

The SDK is designed to help issuers launch virtual cards and payment services with greater ease, while addressing infrastructure challenges that have slowed digital transformation in some markets.

Visa Pay provides an interoperable platform that allows both banked and unbanked consumers to make payments, receive funds and transfer money across participating banks, fintechs and mobile money networks.

The SDK comes with integrated issuer processing, built-in customer experience features, tokenisation readiness, and Visa-certified security and compliance capabilities to simplify deployment.

The platform supports a wide range of payment use cases, including e-commerce transactions, remittances, mobile money-linked virtual cards, virtual card issuance, humanitarian aid disbursements and payment processing enablement.

Visa also announced plans to introduce Tap to Pay, a feature that will allow consumers to make secure contactless payments by simply tapping their mobile phones on compatible payment terminals.

Speaking on the development, Godfrey Sullivan, Senior Vice President and Head of Products and Solutions for Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa at Visa, said the initiative is aimed at helping financial institutions deliver trusted digital payment experiences more efficiently.

“Visa Pay is designed to help issuers meet a wide range of market needs, from secure e-commerce and remittances to mobile money-linked virtual cards, humanitarian disbursements, person-to-person payments and future contactless experiences,” he said.

He added: “By embedding these capabilities directly into existing mobile applications, Visa Pay’s SDK helps banks, mobile money operators and fintechs bring trusted digital payment experiences to consumers faster, while unlocking new opportunities for growth across domestic and cross-border use cases.”

Visa, a global leader in digital payments, operates in more than 200 countries and territories, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and governments while advancing secure and inclusive digital commerce.