Nigerian banks enable cross-border payments via mVisa

Visa’s efforts to expand its mobile payments service mVisa in developing nations reached a milestone this month in Nigeria, the first country where banks are enabling cross-border payments with the QR code-based mVisa technology.

Diamond Bank, Fidelity Bank and First Bank plan to offer their customers cross-border payments services via mVisa through their mobile banking apps, and several other banks including Access Bank, Ecobank, United Bank for Africa and Zenith Bank will add support for mVisa within the next few weeks, Visa said in a Monday announcement.

“With mVisa, Diamond Bank has raised the bar for cashless banking in Nigeria,” said Uzoma Dozie, CEO and group managing director at Diamond Bank, in the release. The move aligns with a new initiative from the Central Bank of Nigeria encouraging cashless transactions, according to the announcement.

Visa has been laying the foundation for its mVisa expansion in Africa for more than a year, targeting smaller merchants looking to accept electronic payments for the first time with minimal friction and expense, said Andrew Torre, Visa’s president for sub-Saharan Africa, in the release.

Consumers and merchants using mVisa receive real-time notifications of payments and access to sales and transactions history, and participating banks added mVisa to their mobile banking platforms using APIs via the Visa Developer Platform, Visa said in the release.