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A virtual card for mobile e-commerce African

Africa remains at the forefront of initiatives in the area of payments via mobile: this time it Mastercard in partnership with Standard Chartered Bank and operator Airtel Africa (a subsidiary of India's Bharti Airtel), which announces an innovative solution virtual card for online purchases, which will initially be offered in Kenya.

Like other African initiatives, the goal of "1time Shopping Card" is to offer basic banking services to the 400 million mobile phone users and 230 million unbanked the continent. But where competing solutions, including the very People M-Pesa (also in Kenya), target P2P payments (that is to say peer to peer, whether between individuals or small merchants), this new system aims sector purchases Online .

The operation is very simple. When setting its transaction on the web, the user "asks" her phone, which provides a credit card number disposable to seize on the payment page and will be recognized as a MasterCard classic "on all sites in the world. A confirmation message is sent to the mobile after validation. The statement

release is short on technical details but as it refers to "Airtel Money Services" (which were recently launched in India) it is conceivable that the approach is identical. The "purse" would be a virtual prepaid account (stored on the SIM card), all dealers in rechargeable operator (a conventional operating mode in Africa, where operators have multiple representatives, even in remote areas). Pushing the reasoning a little further, it is likely that the application generating card numbers is also embedded on the map SIM, making it compatible with all terminals, even simple.

The double target unbanked and purchases on the internet seems a bit contradictory but I may be a victim of stereotypes about Africa ... Anyway, he would have little meaning for Airtel to launch a P2P payment system in Kenya, the "kingdom" of M-Pesa. This is certainly so for the operator of a new test for a complementary solution to its "Money services", all while having a vocation to be widespread in all markets where we operate (including 15 African countries ).

Moreover, technique card number disposable is an interesting answer (and easy to use) a large portion of the risks of fraud in online payments (as would be the "e-Carte Bleue in France) . For MasterCard, the goal is perhaps to validate this concept before deploying some form or another, in countries where e-commerce explodes ...