Payment Service Provider, Direct Pay Online (DPO) has launched DumaCard, Africa’s first business to business payment card to its ten thousand business customers in Kenya and Tanzania. The card is available in plastic and virtual forms. In its virtual form, DumaCard provides users with a 16-digit card number, expiry date and security code linked to the Direct Pay Online payment system.
“This is an extremely exciting development particularly for businesses in Africa – the growth of which is critical to economic development. Our goal is to support the growth of businesses throughout Africa by allowing them to pay and be paid securely and effortlessly throughout the continent and internationally, ensuring that more organizations in Africa are financially included and have the same opportunity to transact online as elsewhere in the world. The DumaCard is another of our innovations enabling this,” said Eran Feinstein, CEO, DPO Group.
The DumaCard can be used as a single or multiple-use card and can be topped up regularly using mobile money so users do not have to have a bank account in order to be able to use the card. Useful both internationally and locally, DumaCard also allows for customization, where merchants can pay single or multiple recipients.
DumaCard is currently on display to over 3000 trade visitors at this year’s Kilifair, East Africa’s largest tourism fair, holding in Arusha, Tanzania. This is no coincidence. At the fair, DPO group hopes to impress tour operators, airlines, hoteliers, and other principal stakeholders in Africa’s travel industry.
Africa’s tourism industry is a useful opening target for DPO’s innovation. By 2030, consumer spending on tourism, hospitality and recreation in Africa will reach about $261 billion. Many African countries, seeing how tourism has outperformed other sectors by six times in the past 20 years, are now intentional towards becoming attractive destinations. DPO Group has a presence in sixteen countries regularly who are regularly adjudged potentially high-value tourist havens.
Since 2006, when it began as 3G Direct Pay, DPO Group has been a stalwart lieutenant in the online payment revolution on the continent, helping to rejig how African businesses and merchants make or receive payments. It has developed Dumapay, Africa’s most advanced mobile payment app, as well as Easy Advance, a service that provides businesses unconditional cash advances of up to $8000. With DumaCard, the company is yanked up another step in the online payment sector.
By Caleb Ajinomoh
