8 Ways Businesses Accept Cashless Payment in Africa: Nigeria and Uganda Precisely

Nowadays, the demand for cashless payment is growing in Africa. Businesses now prefer to accept payment cashlessly and people would rather have mobile money instead of physical cash for their purchases.

According to Statista, as of 2018, 79% of businesses allow Ugandan to make payment with their credit or debit cards. However, 15% of business could receive customers payments directly from bank account. 

According to the Bank of Uganda, the transactions made via mobile money platforms rose by 42.2% to UGX 113.4 trillion for the year ended June 2021. Additionally, the value of payments processed via debit cards rose by 14.4% to UGX 1,561.1 billion for the year ended June 2021. All these is to show the rate businesses are evacuating cash payment.

Advantages of Cashless Payment

Aside from cashless payment in Uganda, this also covered all the advantages of using cashless payment for your business.

1. Security

For Cashless payment to be processed or completed through credit/debit cards or mobile money, there are levels of encryption and authentication process it will pass through. This aid the protection of customers and merchants.

For example, 90 percent cashless payment methods [bank card or mobile money payment] have two-factor authentication or required a pin/code before authorizing a transaction.

2. Seamlessly

For both parties [business owner and customer], cashless payment reduced the stress of handling cash around. It saves time and it easy to manage all your spending in one dashboard.

Additionally, it seamless because you can transact as many as you want. Also merchants can receive payment without limits.

3. Discount

Using cashless payment can reduce transactions charges of withdrawing money from ATM. You can easily make a payment from your debit card or mobile money Platforms without paying any fees. 

Now that you've know the usefulness of accepting cashless payment for your businesses, let proceed to how you can implement this methods on your businesses.

How to Accept Cashless Payment as a Business in Africa [Uganda and Nigeria]

As a business owner, you can easily accept cashless payment by using:

$ads={1}

1. MTN MoMo Pay or Airtel Pay

MTN and Airtel in Uganda has features that allow their merchants to receive payment from customers simply by putting your agent numbers. 

To do that, simply dial *165# for MTN users and *185# for Airtel users. Then select MoMo Pay or Airtel Pay respectively and enter the merchant codes to complete your payment.

To register your business on MTN MoMo Pay or Airtel Pay, visit any of the Telecommunication company service agent near to you and they will guide you from there.

2. Mobile Money

This is one of the most simple way to accept cashless payment. You can tell your customers to send your money via a bank mobile app. All you need to do is give your consumer your account details and the money will be forwarded from his/her account to your account using mobile money.

3. Fintech Mobile Application

Using Fintech Startup app like Chipper Cash, Wave Mobile Money Platform, ChapChap and Eversend is a great way to accept cashless payment for your business.

This is how it works, you can open an account on those app. The platform will provide you an account number, you can then instruct your payee to pay into those Account. It has simple as ABC.

Now the benefits of those Fintech platform is that they give you discount or no transaction charges will be required if you're sending within the same platform. Example of such is Chipper Cash. You can send to another chipper cash user using a unique ID called Chipper Tag. 

4. Payment Gateway

Platform such as Flutterwave and Paystack helps Business owner to accept cashless payment for their products using their integrated API. These platform work best for online retail store merchants. E-commerce platforms such as Jumia, Kings, Glovo, Ali Express uses Payment Gateway to accept payment on their online stores.

5. Point-of-sales [POS] machine

This is another most popular methods to accept cashless payment as a business owner. All that requires is customer will use their credit or debit card to make payment for any goods they buy.

As a merchants or business owner, you will need to get a POS machine from Fintech company that issues them. Some are paid and some are for free. You can get the free one from Banks but it has a high level of transaction fees. While you can get the paid ones from Fintech company such as Flutterwave, Moniepoint, Kudi etc. It has an advantage of little or no transaction fee is required.

6. E-Wallet/Cryptocurrency

This is also another common way to accept cashless payment as a business owner. You can accept via Bitcoin, Ethereum and even Binance Tokens.

The method is a decentralized process whereby asset sent cannot be refund and trace. All you need to do as a merchant is research a cryptocurrency platform that possesses a crypto wallet that will suit your business and open an account on the platform.

Moreso, when ever you want to accept payment, you give your crypto wallet to your customers to send some asset via it or let your customers scan your wallet QR code.

7. Cheque

You customer can decide to issue you a cheque for his/her purchases. These can be done when a large quantities of goods is bought.

This can also be called cashless because no paper money is issued, however, you will need to go to your bank to pay in the cheque.

8. Credit Card and Debit Card

These is the most used methods. Customer prefer to make cashless payment using there credit card or debit card. This can be done online when shopping online and it can be used at physical shop via POS when buying in-person.

Cashless Payment for businesses in Africa is getting surge. The convenience and security associated with the payment methods is an important factor people are relying and making use cashless payment.