Airtel Tanzania and Mahindra Comviva win prestigious AfricaCom awards 2016 for “Tap-Tap” NFC Payments Service

Abuja, Nigeria – December 28, 2016: Mahindra Comviva , the global leader in providing mobility solutions, and Airtel Tanzania , one of the leading telecom providers in Tanzania, today announced that they have jointly won the AfricaCom awards for Airtel Money “Tap Tap” NFC payments service in the “Best Mobile Financial Services” category. The awards were recently presented at a glittering ceremony held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, Cape Town, South Africa.

Airtel Money “Tap Tap” NFC Payments, powered by Mahindra Comviva’s mobiquity® Money , allows customers to make fast and seamless payments at merchant POS besides addressing key customer and merchant adoption related challenges. Airtel Money “Tap Tap” NFC payments is a closed-loop NFC payments service that provides a digital medium for paying at merchants and local stores. By facilitating digital payments Airtel Money is helping Tanzania to move towards a cashless economy.

Commenting on the achievement, Isack Nchunda, Marketing Director and Head of Airtel Money in Tanzania, said “Tap Tap is an evolutionary step in merchant payments in Tanzania. By bringing NFC payments’ contactless experience and Airtel’s reach and service on a common platform, Airtel Money Tap Tap ensures fast and seamless payments experience at merchants that are comparable to the best in the world. With ease and convenience of “Tap and Pay” payments delivered, we��ve broadened digital payments’ scope to supermarkets, retail shops, bars, pharmacies, fuel stations. This is a revolution in making as the size of merchant payments is many times the size of P2P payment and digitization helps to bring all of them under a cashless umbrella.”

Srinivas Nidugondi, Senior VP and Head of Mobile Financial Solutions, Mahindra Comviva said, Mahindra Comviva said: “We are happy to win this award and we offer our congratulations to our partners for this big win too. This win will motivate us to create innovative digital payment propositions for the industry and provide customers with a better alternative to cash. Our partnership with Airtel is not only beneficial to merchants and their customers but also helps in furthering the economy as well as driving inclusive growth.”

Airtel Money is one of the leading mobile money services in Tanzania with 5 million customers. By offering an array of mobile money services such as P2P transfer, bill payments, micro-loans, contactless merchant payments, bulk payments and airtime recharge, Airtel Money is digitizing payments in Tanzania and contributing to the vision of a cashless Tanzania.

mobiquity® Money delivers a host of mobile money services that transforms the way consumers save, borrow, transfer and spend money. It is designed to seamlessly integrate consumer touch points with a wide ecosystem of banks, billers, merchants and third-party payment systems, creating a convergence powered by interoperability. Apart from delivering convenience to consumers, the solution enables financial service providers to acquire new customers, create long-term loyalty with existing ones, and seize new revenue opportunities to increase their footprint in the market. mobiquity® Money empowers financial service providers to be agile in their markets, with complete focus on the customers. mobiquity® Money has clocked over 65 deployments in more than 45 countries. It powers three of the top 10 deployments globally and processes 200 million transactions every month amounting to $4 billion.

AfricaCom is the largest and most influential Africa focused tech event and this year’s focus was on economic development and social empowerment through digital connectivity. AfricaCom Awards celebrate and pay tribute to the industry initiatives that improve connectivity and digital transformation across the continent