Paga Teams With LISNR on No-Contact Payments in Africa

Nigerian payments platform Paga Group has joined forces with proximity verification firm LISNR to enable contactless ultrasonic authentication and contactless payments across Africa, according to a Tuesday (Nov. 16) press release issued by LISNR.

The joint effort is LISNR’s first major collaboration within the FinTech space in Africa and comes on the heels of the recently debuted merchant solution, Doroki, an inventory management and payment collection system, according to the announcement.

Read more: Nigerian SMBs Get Digital Payments Boost Through Untapped Global-Paga Pairing

Following months of successful in-market tests to improve Paga’s customer experience, transaction time, security and retailer onboarding, the ultrasonic verification tool will be leveraged across Paga’s system to enable consumers to pay merchants and send money to each other easily, according to the announcement.

Paga Group Founder and CEO Tayo Oviosu said the partnership will help the company expand from its current 33,000 merchants to a goal of 120,000 merchants within the next two years.

“We are excited to incorporate LISNR into the Paga and Doroki Apps. We are leveraging their technology for both person-to-business and person-to-person payments,” Oviosu said. “This is exciting because people can now pay at a till without being very close to the cashier. It also enables us to offer more interesting non-payment use cases for merchants and consumers.”

LISNR, which uses ultrasound technology to provide a tool that lets merchants and payment providers accept mobile payment data anytime throughout the customer experience regardless of in-store, eCommerce, or scan-and-go, received an investment from Visa two years ago, according to PYMNTS.

See also: Visa Invests In LISNR To Boost Mobile Payments Growth

Paga has also partnered with Visa, according to PYMNTS. The payments platform creates Visa-branded credit cards for about 60 million customers, enabling transactions with any retailer worldwide that accepts Visa as a payment method.

Since the pandemic, the company has seen a dramatic increase in the number of customers and merchants alike shifting to digital payments in Nigeria, a country previously dominated by cash. Paga Co-founder Jay Alabraba told PYMNTS last year that the company saw a roughly five-fold increase in new registration in the second quarter of 2020 as compared to the first quarter.

Related: How The Pandemic Is Reshaping The Nigerian Digital Payments Landscape