Payments round-up: 21 October 2016
Jargon defeated. Unnecessary words deleted. A brief payments round-up.
LeFinance, a division of Beijing-based tech firm LeEco, has partnered with the Stellar Development Foundation for cross-border payments on the latter’s blockchain network.
The deal means Stellar expands into China. LeFinance will also use Stellar’s network to monitor credits for usage across their various devices and platforms, and for its scalable accounting system for content in the cloud.
French bank BNP Paribas and supermarket titan Carrefour are to merge their Wa! and Fivory electronic wallets to create a unified mobile payment solution.
Masterpass passes African test
The new app, backed by Auchan Retail France, Credit Mutuel-CIC, MasterCard, Oney and Total, will receive its brand name by the end of this year and launch in early 2017.
The Ecobank Group has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with MasterCard to roll-out Masterpass QR, a mobile payment solution, across 33 African countries. The new agreement is part of Ecobank’s ambitions to get 100 million customers by 2020.
The MoU signals the “largest Masterpass deal of its kind for Mastercard globally”. Ecobank customers in Nigeria already use Masterpass QR; and the remaining 32 countries across Africa will get access by the end of 2016.
