- Paystack, a Nigerian fintech company, has announced the launch of its Virtual Terminal in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa
- With this development, merchants in these countries can now generate unique QR codes for their employees, such as cashiers, delivery riders, and sales agents.
- When customers scan the QR code, they can pay with one of Paystack's many options, including mobile money, cards, or Apple Pay. The staff member receives an instant confirmation on WhatsApp after a successful payment.
Meanwhile, they can disable the QR code at any time, change the attached WhatsApp number, and set it up so that multiple WhatsApp numbers are notified when a payment is made.
“You simply create as many QR codes as you need and assign them to your sales agents, all from your Paystack Dashboard. This eliminates the operational burden of managing multiple physical POS devices, while significantly cutting your costs,” the fintech confirmed in a statement.
This solution was first introduced in Nigeria in 2021, allowing businesses like retail stores, restaurants, and pay-on-delivery services to quickly accept in-person payments on a large scale without incurring any hardware costs.
It simplifies the payment process by bringing Paystack's seamless online checkout experience directly to physical locations, and it also includes real-time payment notifications to keep users up to date on transactions.
The Virtual Terminal includes all the benefits of the Paystack ecosystem, such as international payments, split payments, easy end-of-day accounting, and the ability to track payments from your phone.
It provides a single QR code that offers customers in each country a variety of payment methods optimised for their region. In Côte d’Ivoire, the available payment methods include MTN MoMo, Wave, Orange Money, Visa, Mastercard, and Apple Pay. In Ghana, the payment methods include MTN MoMo, Telecel Cash (previously Vodafone Cash), AirtelTigo Money, Visa, Mastercard, and Apple Pay.
In Kenya, the available payment methods include, M-PESA, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Apple Pay while Scan to Pay, SnapScan, EFT, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Apple Pay are the available methods in South Africa
The Stripe-owned fintech company quietly obtained a switching and processing licence from the Central Bank of Nigeria in April 2022, allowing it to route financial transactions between financial institutions directly.