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Kenya’s Equity Bank will issue 300,000 smartphones to retailers to aid cashless transactions and deepen use of the lender’s new ATM cards that allow tap-and-go payments.
Business Daily reports the bank is turning to mobile phones as a cheaper and more convenient point of sale (PoS) compared to the traditional swipe card readers.
Customers will be able to tap their Equity MasterCard cards on the phones with contactless payment technology based on Near Field Communication (NFC) to make retail payments.
“Our new MasterCard ATM cards are ‘tap-and-go’ hence the need to put mobile PoS devices with merchants to process payments,” said Equity Bank chief executive James Mwangi during the release of the bank’s first quarter financial results. “The NFC-enabled phones and cards will help Equity Bank be well positioned to significantly increase volumes and commission from payment processing.”
Equity will distribute the phones free of charge to supermarkets, restaurants, kiosks and barbershops as it seeks to boost income from the payments processing business. It has already issued more than three million high-security chip-and-PIN cards ATM cards to its customers to replace the current magnetic swipe plastics which are prone to fraud.
