HPS, a leading multinational provider of payment solutions, today announces that it has completed the modernisation of Absa’s African Operations outside of South Africa (“ARO”) acquiring payments infrastructure journey.

The transformation journey started in July 2019 with HPS replacing the existing legacy acquiring switch with PowerCARD for eight countries where Absa operates: Botswana, Kenya, Mauritius, Zambia, Tanzania, Ghana, Uganda and Seychelles.

Absa Regional Operations subsequently replaced their legacy merchant acquiring settlement platform with PowerCARD which was completed in March 2020.

“The payments landscape in Africa poses a huge potential. Through electronic payments, we aim to bring financial services to many more unbanked and underbanked people, reduce transaction costs and increase customer convenience. And this is a significant investment committed as part of our journey to transform the payments capability of the firm” said Vimal Kumar, Chief Executive - Retail & Business Bank at Absa ARO. 

“Banks and other financial institutions today are looking for providers ready and eager to help them determine the best route for their business to take when it comes to electronic payments options. Being able to accept payment from customers through the latest means of transaction is becoming an important way to build customer loyalty, particularly in emerging markets like Africa where this sector is becoming increasingly digitised” said Sebastien Slim – Regional Director at HPS. 

“By choosing PowerCARD, our partners have selected a payments platform that enables them to position itself to better compete in a modern, fast-moving digitalised banking world with a payments processing platform that will allow the bank to deliver innovative payments solutions fast and keep up with ever-increasing customer demands” Slim continued. 

“The new single platform which consolidated our switch and settlement capability reduces our cost to serve, improves stability and customer experience and the compliance capability allows role-based access per country, this privileged view enables countries to manage their own operational controls” said Vanessa Olver, Chief Separation Officer at Absa, ARO.