Interswitch, Nigeria’s leading digital payment gateway, has announced a strategic partnership with Visa Inc., the world leader in digital payments.
The strategic partnership is expected to further advance the digital payments system across Africa.
With the partnership, “Visa” will acquire a significant minority equity stake in Interswitch.
The investment makes Interswitch one of the most valuable African FinTech businesses with a valuation of US$1 billion.
Visa will join globally renowned investors, Helios Investment Partners, TA Associates and IFC, as shareholders in Interswitch, alongside Company management.
Interswitch was founded in 2012 and had processed over 500 million transactions per month in May 2019 alone.
Despite the switching and processing services, Interswitch still owns Verve, the largest domestic debit card scheme in Africa with more than 19 million cards activated on its network as of May 2019.
They also operate QuickTeller, a leading multichannel consumer payments platform with over 270,000 access points, as of 2018, from which consumers can initiate peer-to-peer transfers, bill payments, airtime purchases, and other e-commerce transactions.
Quickteller also had processed over 42 million transactions monthly as of 31 July 2019 (equivalent to over ₦560 billion (US$1.5 billion) through direct, indirect and Paypoint channels).
