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July 23, 2018 • Issue 18:07:02
P2P payments growth portends

future market opportunities

Mastercard is advancing pilots in Africa and Asia
that support micro- and small-merchant acceptance of
contactless payments using the Facebook Messenger
platform. The new Masterpass QR (quick response) bot is
available now for merchants in Nigeria and Tanzania, two
predominantly rural countries where large swaths of the
population are unbanked, but most carry mobile phones.

In Nigeria, for example, the government reported that
40 percent of the population is unbanked, yet 80 percent
have mobile devices, and nearly two-thirds of those are
smartphones. According to research by the Mastercard
Center for Inclusive Growth, 96 percent of the over $300
billion in funds that flow from consumers to businesses in
Nigeria in 2017 involved cash.

Shop owners who want to accept mobile payments and
By Patti Murphy either are unbanked or lack the resources necessary for
traditional mobile POS acceptance devices start the process
erson-to-person (P2P) payments are exploding, by sending a request through Facebook Messenger. That
particularly when it comes to mobile-enabled triggers a bank account approval and setup process that
transactions. Over the short term, this may have results in issuance of a QR code, which the merchant can
P little impact on the merchant acquiring space. either print and display in store or save to a mobile device.
But long term, it should drive more mobile POS payments Two banks in Nigeria and one in Tanzania currently
and more small merchants to electronic payment accep- support Masterpass QR.
tance.
Customers initiate payments by using smartphones to scan
Mastercard and Visa are betting on this. Over the past few the QR code, or by entering the merchant ID associated
years, the two have launched several initiatives intended to with the code into their phones.
drive more P2P payments to their networks.

Visa has been signing up leading banks, processors
and technology companies for Visa Direct, a card-based Contributed articles inside by:
platform that promises to deliver P2P transactions almost
instantaneously to any person or small business with a Steve Norell ............................................................................................32
debit card. "Our network has gone from being the preferred
rails for face-to-face transactions to now being the preferred Matt Nern ................................................................................................36
rails for ecommerce transactions, m-commerce transactions Konstantinos Papakonstantinou ....................................................38
[and] the backbone for P2P transactions," Vasant M. Prabhu, Mike Camerling .....................................................................................40
Visa executive vice president and chief financial officer,
said in a recent presentation to analysts. TOC on page 3

Continued on page 30